Breaking news

Spurtle ventured out of our comfort zone this afternoon to visit the seedier side of Calton, in particular this splendidly malagrugrous cul-de-sac: St Ninian’s Row.

It looks like the sort of place tourists should be taken to hand over their spare £20 notes, and/or the ideal spot to find a dead body. Today, though, it was the site of nothing more unpleasant than inch-thick pigeon guano.

The street has a very long history. The area associated with it was originally much larger, but was mostly obliterated to make way for Waterloo Place and a railway goods yard at Waverley.

Broughton’s Christina Thomson, picked by locals for her work as a community volunteer, ran a local stretch of the Queen’s Baton Relay this afternoon.

The event heralds the imminent start of the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

Moving at a speed almost too fast for the Spurtle camera to keep track of, and leaving superfit uniformed and plain-clothes police athletes trailing in her wake, Mrs Thomson completed the leg between London Road roundabout and Annandale Street via Elm Row.

Unpuffed and unperspiring, she briefly greeted friends, family and well-wishers ...

Has anyone else noticed how local addresses are beginning to resemble complicated mathematical formulae these days?

You practically need a degree to work out where someone lives. When did 1f2b² 6/3 ever resemble an actual location? With new properties and additions to properties cropping up all the time (Meuse’s, Street North, Lane East, extensions on extensions on top of garages that are actually houses that were once Meuses) it’s becoming difficult enough for locals to find their way around let alone for visitors and new posties.

The bucolic pleasures of Bellevue Place are even bucolicer and more pleasurable at the moment than usual.

The junction with Mansfield Place – long beautified at her own expense by Christina Thomson and last reported in Breaking news (13.3.14) – is  now awash with colour, beautiful scent and exuberant growth.

From some angles ...

A minor tragedy has unfolded on McDonald Road, writes our wandering Music correspondent. It concerns the unexpected arrival there, last Monday or Tuesday, of a pianola. 

The instrument appeared on the street when the weather was still fine. A notice attached said that it was going to be collected.

At that stage it was in a fit condition to play, and tinkling from its ivories could be heard on the warm-ish evenings early in the week.

Last autumn we reported on the Council’s interesting bid to establish what locals in Edinburgh think of as their ‘natural neighbourhoods’ (Breaking news, 15.10.13). 

The draft results of that survey are now available online here, and your comments are invited. (You could even win a map for participating.) 

This goosander and her six chicks were enjoying the sun at lunchtime today on a stump in midstream just below Warriston Cemetery.

She can, with difficulty, be distinguished from a female red-breasted merganser by the absence of white rings around her eyes. Unlike human parents of young offspring, she also lacks dark bags under her eyes.

Goosanders only established themselves in Scotland in 1871, and spread to the north of England in 1941 and thence southwest. They are partial to fish, and use their hooked and sawtoothed bills to catch them.

What a difference a week makes.

Last Saturday, in brilliant early morning sunshine, Edinburgh Trams began running its commercial service between the Airport and York Place for the first time. Almost everybody loved them.

Artisan Roast even waxed lyrical on its Broughton Street A-board (right).

Seven days later, the sun has gone and the rain is lashing down on the capital with worse forecast over the coming hours.

The Union Gallery this month features the first ever joint showing in Edinburgh of work by husband and wife Jim McCutcheon and Linda Downie.

Really is an exhibition of strong contrasts and subtle similarities, of memorable images which often raise as many questions as they answer. If there is one thing of which one can be certain here, it is that reality, in Really, defies definition, and can certainly not be relied upon.

A major new development is proposed for the gap-site next to McDonald Road Library at 34B Haddington Place (Ref. 14/02115/PAN).