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Local resident Christina Thomson was busily putting the finishing touches to her latest creation at the corner of Bellevue and Bellevue Place this afternoon. 

We are not giving too much away when we say that next month's display has a Christmas theme. 

Mrs Thomson brushed aside compliments as she remarked, 'There's still a lot to do yet'.

She fixed us with a beady eye: 'I keep being interrupted by people laughing at me'.

A close-up of the finished design – including a mystery central figure – will appear in the Spurtle soon.

Who doesn’t love Brides Magazine? 

This correspondent was reading it avidly at breakfast this morning until it suddenly became apparent that the cost of the average BM reader’s wedding in the UK is £24,716. 

The figures break down as follows: 

Albert Einstein was once asked by an admirer whether he had stood on the shoulders of Sir Isaac Newton in reaching such dizzying scientific heights. 

‘No,’ replied Einstein. ‘I stand on the shoulders of Maxwell.’

Standing on the shoulders of Maxwell this evening, or at least looming over them, was the brilliantly lit but seemingly little used helter-skelter in St Andrew Square.

The December/January issue of your free independent stirrer is almost here. Advance copies have already been seen by some members of the team, and they are – reportedly – more beautiful than a Bernard Matthews turkey.

The Spurtles, obviously, not the team members.

Issue 236 contains no giblets but plenty of planning, fiascos, Council rethinks, warm wishes, courting and LURVE.

An LGBT Service to mark the First Sunday in Advent will be held at Broughton St Mary's Parish Church this weekend, writes the Rev. Graham McGeoch.

The Service has been written by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and will include the participation of Stonewall Scotland, Waverley Care Community Choir and the leading playwright and former professor of theatre at Queen Margaret University Jo Clifford.

Barely a week goes past without the high heid yins at Royal Bank of Scotland being engulfed in some new financial scandal. 

If it’s not bankrupting the country, then it’s rigging the Libor rate or not managing to run its cashpoint machines reliably or misleading a parliamentary commission investigating the bank’s deliberate ruination of its own corporate clients.

Shame follows shame follows shame.

Under these circumstances, you might expect the former capital colossus to hang its head. Or at least to try keeping a low profile for a while.

Police Scotland's relentless plugging of SmartWater Technology Ltd's chemical marker product continues.

Locals at community council meetings have already been bombarded with repeated positive accounts of the product over the last few months. Now, journalists are getting the same treatment with release of a Police Scotland email this afternoon which mentions the company name no fewer than eight times.

ALL GOOD THINGS ... 

COME ... 

The new Winter Show at Bon Papillon opened last night, featuring work by resident landscapist Senja Brendon (formerly Bownes), Melanie Williamson (land and sea in oils) and Lynne Harkes’s contemplative landscapes and abstracted plant forms. 

Also on show are new paintings by gallery co-owner Ingrid Nilsson, whose distinctive quirky portraiture and decorative detail have evolved to include a little more collage than we’re used to in works such as ‘Rose Amour’ (right).

In a Westminster parliamentary debate on devolution and the Union yesterday, Edinburgh North and Leith MP Mark Lazarowicz reiterated the role of the Barnett Formula as a formula for spending rather than one based on real needs assessment.

‘Let us get away from the idea that the Barnett formula is a subsidy for Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.