Breaking news

Planning permission has been given for Warriston Community Tennis Club’s construction of a full-sized tarmacadam tennis court and adjoining mini-court in the south-east corner of Council-owned Warriston Playing Fields (Ref. 13/02168/FUL). 

RHYS FULLERTON REVIEWS TRIS VONNA-MICHELL’S THE ARTIST AND THE GRAVEDIGGER: AFTER D.O. HILL.

‘The photograph is a grave for the living dead. It tells their history – a history of ghosts and shadows’ (Eduardo Cadavo).

‘Kill'em! Strangle'em! Don't let go! Kill'em! Kill'em! Kill'em ALL!!’

So says Chucky in the 1988 horror film Child’s Play, capturing rather neatly the dark territory children enter alarmingly often and quickly with unfettered imagination.

Play can be profoundly creative and amoral. It gives licence to the violence of make-believe. It sets few bounds. It rarely apologises. It is the kitten's enjoyable rehearsal of a kill.

Over the last few weeks (most recently in Issue 232, published today) we have featured the unreliable political implications of politically themed cupcake sales in Dundas Street's Cuckoo's Bakery.

The results have suggested an overwhelming No vote when it comes to next month’s Independence Referendum.

But no-one really takes these findings too seriously. They are what is known as ‘just a bit of fun’.

Not everyone, however, completely grasps the notion of fun, and politically themed cushion covers in the window of another Broughton shop have caused a stramash.

For a downhill peregrination across Broughton in Bloom, Ross Maclean – himself no mean gardener – recommends the following itinerary.

1. Start at the corner of Albany and Broughton Streets, and admire the fine mini-garden created and tended by a retired employee of Simpson & Marwick.

Sit on the wall and observe the butterflies and bees, too!

On a rare evening outing to the pub, I only had time for a swift half or two and I intended to make the most of it and choose my venue wisely. 

I went to the Cask & Barrel, but was put off by the handwritten list of who was and wasn’t allowed in the premises. No children inside, no children outside, no dogs, no goats, no geese, no gnomes. I was so confused after reading the list that I decided to try elsewhere just in case I was thrown out for not complying.

August’s Spurtle (Issue 232) is printed, folded, bundled into tens, and now being loaded onto a caravan of GPS-guided delivery-llamas ready for distribution across the barony.

This month we cover crashes, skeletons and the Calton Centre, problems with post, philanthropy, cats, rabbits, tigers and wee things which bite where they shouldn’t, the damned beautiful, the lost, the cheeky, the mysterious, the having-a-laugh, winged, perplexing, underground, flowering, unexpected, unblinking, naked, tasty, surprisingly large, politically unreliable, musical and ingenious.

Returning home yesterday evening, Spurtle reader Miranda Gilhooley spotted this curious message attached to the policebox in Drummond Place.

Measuring, ‘framed’, roughly the size of a postcard, it reads like an overhead snippet from a stranger’s telephone conversation.

'Humdrum but interesting,' Gilhooley describes it. 'Steven sounds nice.'

There’s something intensely intimate about books. Especially old ones. 

That agreeable memory of ink and leather, polish, damp and slight decay. That moment of literally burying one’s nose in the gutter. Of being engrossed. Of witnessing the object’s gradual disintegration between one’s fingers, encountering spines, discovering that they too sometimes consist of words drawn from earlier printed sources.

Edinburgh-based visual artist Jo McDonald delves deep into just such territory in work showing this month at McNaughtan’s Bookshop (Fringe Venue 102).