Breaking news

Most hypothermic activists reported brisk voting this morning at the seven Broughton polling places within Edinburgh North and Leith. We were not so sure.

The disappointing trickle in Broughton Primary School's gym had been replaced by a steady patter of feet, thanks to the lack of rain. Along the road, though, at Bellevue Chapel, things were very quiet. Nobody seems sure who votes here or where they come from. Adding to the mystery, this was the only polling place today at which we saw Liberal-Democrat publicity of any sort.

RHYS FULLERTON REVIEWS DERRICK GUILD'S MOTHER FIGURES

A diamond-encrusted parsnip. Subliminal messages within a still life. A leaf wearing earrings.

These are just some of the peculiar artworks by Scottish artist Derrick Guild, on offer at The Scottish Gallery this month. 

Trade waste containers for licensed premises, shops  and restaurants have been multiplying over the past few years, writes local resident John MacDonald, but most of them could soon be consigned to the dustbin of history.

Apart from the unsightly appearance of several brightly coloured bins clustered together, I have found from personal experience that their owners sometimes overfill them and subsequently ignore and fail to clean up any spill-over litter scattered about the area by scavengers.

Following on from the Spurtle's hustings event last month, the BBC is holding tonight's Scotland Leaders’ election debate in the Mansfield Traquair Centre.

Ruth Davidson (Con.), Jim Murphy (Lab.), Willie Rennie (Lib-Dem.) and Nicola Sturgeon (SNP) will be slugging it out from 7.30pm on BBC 1, with Glenn Campbell chairing.

This intriguing ensemble is called ‘Gorlitzer Bahnhof’. It is by the contemporary Scottish artist Gardner Muirhead and appears as part of his exhibition Leitmotif which previewed in the Sutton Gallery this evening.

Muirhead incorporates Japanese woodblock printing into his work, mixing it with found images, photography and lino printing.

DAVID HILL ON RODNEY AND BROUGHTON STREET HAUNTS – THE GHOSTLY AND THE GHASTLY 

Ghost signs – hand-painted traces of an earlier generation's entrepreneurial spirit – are a well-documented and much photographed phenomenon.

Like abandoned departure boards displaying destinations no longer served, these faint contours of past commerce make promises that cannot now be fulfilled. 

What is that strange excitement in the air? What is that gathering vibration? Is it the tremor of erupting crocuses? Is it the massed yawns of wakening hedgehogs? The beat of migrant wings returning from the South?

No. It's the clatter of Spurtle’s May issue bursting from the presses like a huge thunderplump of hyperlocal news, views, heads-ups, hands on hearts and mixed metaphors.

Issue 240 contains musical and chronometrical developments, an imminent absence and a likely arrival.

City of Edinburgh Council and The Collective gallery have come forward with plans for a major re-imagining of the Observatory Complex on Calton Hill (Ref. 15/01737/LBC). 

Collective’s vision is to be:

Spring in Edinburgh. 

First, let's start with the theory. 

Pictured right, the window of a Rodney Street café has been decorated with seasonal blooms in an optimistic, yellowy display redolent of new growth and lambkins gambolling over the sunlit meadows of Heriot Hill. 

Now, the reality. 

Below, filmed this afternoon from an East Claremont Street window, the first signs of an 'Arctic ploom' heading for Edinburgh this evening. Occasional snow and hailstones. On 27 April. Perishing.

Many Broughton residents are avowed Nature lovers.

Many spend hours studying or attempting to improve the lot of our scaly, feathered and four-footed friends.

But any objective observer would have to say that sometimes Nature doesn’t help itself.

Take a look at this mound of stuff pulled recently from the Water of Leith and now piled ready for a Council uplift from St Mark’s Park.