An item of "Breaking News". Will appear on the Breaking News page and the front page.
Spurtle attended two services of remembrance today in Broughton.
The first was held this morning at Broughton St Mary’s Parish Church on Bellevue Crescent. As well as parishioners and invited guests, it involved representatives of the military, Legion Scotland, Scouts and school pupils at primary and secondary levels. Music was provided by the church choir and local wind ensemble No Strings Attached.
A REFLECTION BY RHYS FULLERTON
At this time of reflection upon the commemoration of the Great War and its impact, I recommend From the Line: Scottish War Poetry 1914–1945, published this year for the Association for Scottish Literary Studies, writes John Ross Maclean.
This fine volume includes poems by John Buchan, Violet Jacob and Neil Munro, who also feature in the superb commemorative exhibition currently in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery.
The work of two artists appears in the Gallery on the Corner this month. Their styles could hardly be more different.
Ross Newton revels in the skies, lands and lochs of wild Scotland, and in the wonderfully watery uncertainty where all three meet.
Reading your article about the butcher shop sign being uncovered in Rodney Street (Breaking news, 26.10.14) made me recall that Rodney Street had four butcher shops, writes Jim Suddon.
In Issue 235 we mentioned briefly the appearance in Pilrig Park of an unusual black squirrel. Nearby residents have named it Zorro. Local man Pav Verity contacted us today with baffling complexities to this interesting development.
‘Do you want to help save the world?’ was the question I was asked as I walked past St Mary’s Cathedral at the top of Broughton Street.
It wasn’t someone from the Church trying to recruit me. It wasn’t someone who had read my thoughtful prose and thought I would make a useful addition to their cause. No, it was a chugger.
News was thin on the ground in Broughton today, or if it wasn't, no-one at the Spurtle had time to pick it up.
Under the ground, though, it was not so much thin as knobbly.
This remarkable pink fir apple potato was recently harvested in a fertile strip of ground behind Drummond Place and Scotland Street.
Pink fir apples were first imported from France in the mid-19th century, but remained popular here among spud enthusiasts long after their peculiar shapes lost them admirers on the Continent.
In Issue 235 we reported the surprisingly prompt reaction of City of Edinburgh Council concerning the moving digital display in a Crichton Place kebab shop.
Moving digital display as in a shifting electronically generated font, not as in emotionally charged finger gestures.
Councillor Deidre Brock pursued the case in early October following complaints from constituents who felt the signage was out of place and distracting to drivers exiting Pilrig Street.
We’re delighted to report that the young female cat with huge green eyes reported in Breaking news (23.10.14; Issue 235) has been reunited with her family.
Just days before she was to be re-homed, her owners tracked her down and she has returned instead to the countryside ‘none the worse for her ordeal and everyone delighted’.
The cat had been ‘on holiday’ in the eastern New Town when she got out by accident and then became lost.