Breaking news

The Glasite Meeting House on Barony Street will be open to visitors this Saturday from 10am–4pm. 

Scottish Historic Buildings Trust staff will be on hand to show off the newly decorated rooms and improved services.

It’s Christmas. 

I detest Christmas. I detest Christmas cards, Christmas jumpers, Christmas trees, Christmas presents, Christmas songs, Christmas cake … 

If you’re thinking about buying me a Christmas present this year then don’t bother. 

Last year, a relative – who obviously doesn’t know me very well – bought me an umbrella. That’s right, an UMBRELLA. It was a man’s umbrella and it had a fancy Italian name that made it sound more expensive than it actually was. It was just what I had always wanted.    

It looked at first like a successful ascent of Mount Usborne. 

In fact, what half-frozen passers-by witnessed yesterday lunchtime was the hoisting of a prestigious Green Flag over King George V Park. 

Members of the local Friends group and Council staff met to celebrate the award (one of 26 in the city), first announced in September. 

The Green Flag scheme has been the national benchmark for excellence since 1996. It judges green public spaces of all kinds according to eight criteria:

For no very good reason, Spurtle is running a spot-the-location quiz. 

Each Wednesday between now and the end of the year, we'll publish five square photographs featuring Broughton viewed from misleading angles or from straightforward angles but unhelpfully cropped afterwards. We use the term 'Broughton' in the elastic sense of flexible Spurtleshire. 

Many passers-by have been infuriated over recent months by the untidy and malodorous state of London Street. 

Broken bin bags, strewn rubbish, and seagulls strutting about as if they own the place have become all too familiar sights. 

It’s interesting, therefore, to learn that London Street residents themselves have been among the most frustrated and disgusted observers of the problem. 

This slightly frightening Sankt Nikolaus can be found at Unicorn Antiques on Dundas Street. 

For much of the day he stands in the basement window, bag in one hand, doll and a few twigs for whipping wicked children in the other, nodding. 

He is an acquired taste. 

Visitors experienced an abundance of free weather on Calton Hill today. 

Southerly 0º breezes wafting to hurricane force lent the air a healthful astringency, focusing minds and stripping the complexions of all those attending the latest 24 Doors of Advent event in the city. 

Billy Connolly once said there is no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong sort of clothes. We beg to differ. Today, on Calton Hill, there were no clothes on earth adequate to the task.

Below is very slightly edited press statement released by Police Scotland yesterday evening. 

Essential Edinburgh’s commercialisation of St Andrew Square will take another step forward if its plans to extend the café there are approved (Ref. 14/04840/FUL). 

REVIEWED BY RHYS FULLERTON 

Collette Rayner’s new work at Collective is based on research into the Principality of Sealand, a 'sovereign micronation' located six nautical miles off the Port of Felixstowe on the east coast of England.

Rayner has created three animations, a sound work and a text, all inspired by her experience of journeying by boat to Sealand but not gaining physical access to the site.