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Parades and an act and service of remembrance took place this morning to mark the centenary of the Gretna Train Disaster.

There was pomp, circumstance, and solemnity aplenty. And also many lighter moments as spirits soared in the early summer sunshine.

The day began on Dalmeny Street, where a procession formed outside the Drill Hall at 9.45am, just as the original funeral cortege had done nearly a hundred years before. The parade stepped off at 10.15am passing across Leith Walk and down Pilrig Street.

'In memory of officers, non-commissioned officers and men 1:7th Batallion the Royal Scots, Leith Territorial Battalion, who met their death at Gretna on 22nd May 1915, in a terrible railway disaster on their way to fight for their country.

'This memorial and a bed in Leith Hospital are dedicated by mourning comrades and friends.

'"Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me."'

The crime rate in Edinburgh was 35 per cent lower in 2014 than in 2004, according to Scottish Government Crime Statistics.

Try telling that to the dozens of small businesses across Broughton and the New Town which have had their premises none too subtly broken into in recent years by thieves looking for cash and easily trouserable goods unsecured within.

I have spent quite a lot of time recently skulking behind bins in the Bellevue and Claremont area, writes Fred Street of the New Town Clean Streets Campaign. 

The idea has been to keep tabs on the not-altogether-straightforward Recycling Trial taking place in the neighbourhood. 

Some interesting patterns are emerging. 

By NTCSC's calculations, the average willingness of a Claremont resident to walk to find an appropriate bin for their recycling is no more than 2 metres. 

How is this figure arrived at? 

RHYS FULLERTON REVIEWS: SLAVS AND TATARS' LEKTOR

Lektor is a solo-exhibition and new commission in Collective’s City Dome by art collective Slavs and Tatars.  

Slavs and Tatars have taken an influential 11th-century Turkic epic, Kutadgu Bilig (Wisdom of Royal Glory), and translated it into five languages. The audio installation is spoken in Uighur (NW China), Turkish, German, Polish, Arabic and Scottish Gaelic.  

Pupils from Leith Academy were out in force today in advance of the Gretna/Quintinshill Rail Disaster ceremony at the weekend.

Their stencilled poppies, with forenames and the dates 1915 and 2015, now punctuate the pavement at roughly 10-foot intervals between the Drill Hall on Dalmeny Street and Rosebank Cemetery on Pilrig Street.

Each one recalls one of the 216 Royal Scots killed in the appalling accident whose 100th anniversary will be marked with a solemn procession along the original funeral route on Saturday.

Twelve parents and staff from Broughton Primary School will take part in the Hairy Haggis Team Relay at the end of this month. 

In doing so, they will not only cover themselves in glory and blisters, but raise money for the school. 

Four teams of three will cover the 26.2 miles, each team running a particular leg of the Edinburgh Marathon Route from Regent Road to Musselburgh via Gosford, which is practically in Denmark (see map below).

In Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, explorer Marco Polo regales Kublai Khan with tales of the mysterious and perhaps fabulous places he encounters on his travels throughout Khan's vast empire.

It becomes clear, however, that the cities he describes are all fragmentary glimpses of just one place: Polo's home town of Venice. 

The driver of this car had a lucky escape in the New Town last night.

He was turning downhill into Nelson Street at around 7.00pm but misjudged the angle of the junction. 

Although travelling at slow speed, he told Spurtle, the 2-ton Mercedes was uncontrollable after hitting the high kerb. The vehicle mounted the pavement and ploughed through ground-floor railings on the other side.

THOMAS AITCHISON'S 'DRAG A FILE HERE' AT COLLECTIVE

How would Andy Warhol have harnessed today’s modern technologies to create his unique brand of art?

Photoshop, 3D printers, social networking etc. would have given him endless opportunities for his work. Would that have been a good thing? Would he have simply dragged a file and let the computer do the rest of the work?