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MESSAGES FROM AN UNKNOWN CONFIDANTE

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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.'

WONDERS OF THE WOVEN WORD

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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).

DELICIOUS SUCCESS (AND THE PAIN WHICH FOLLOWS)

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The sporting types at Villeneuve Wines on Broughton Street have been celebrating yesterday’s win of the 101st Tour de France by Vincenzo Nibali.

The 29-year-old Italian won with a margin of 7 minutes and 39 seconds, and is one of only six men to win the Tour de France, the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a Espana.

Respected by professional riders for his uncompromising determination, he is known among them – not altogether affectionately – as 'The Shark of Messina'.

REED THROWS LONG IN CHAMPIONSHIPS FINAL

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Well done, Kimberley Reed! The high-flying Broughton hammer thrower last week won through to the Final of the World Juniors Championships in Eugene, Oregon.

Kimberley qualified from her heat with a best throw of 58.57m.

In the Final itself on Thursday, she began with 59.96m in the first round, extending this to 60.17m before getting a red card in the third round and so losing the chance of a further three throws.

This was her best throw in around two months, and a welcome return to form on the big occasion.

BONES THAT SPEAK – LONG DEAD LEITHERS RISE AGAIN

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Archaeologists say skeletons discovered during tramwork preparations have told them a lot about how people lived and died in Leith hundreds of years ago.

City of Edinburgh Council and Headland Archaeology dug up the remains of nearly 400 people from beneath Constitution Street in 2009. All are now in permanent storage.

They constitute what City Archaeologist John Lawson describes as ‘one of the largest and most important urban excavations of human remains undertaken in Edinburgh and Scotland in recent years’.

McDONALD PLACE CRASH & CARRY – HOIST WITH ITS OWN PETARD

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In January of this year, City of Edinburgh Council refused permission for Batleys Limited (the wholesale cash and carry on McDonald Place) to permanently extend its delivery and loading hours from 7am–8pm on Monday–Saturday and 8.30am–noon on Sundays (Breaking news, 21.1.14).

They wanted to preserve the amenity of local residents, some of whom had complained of disruption by lorries and crashing cages.

CONCRETE AND CARDBOARD – CRUMPLED TREASURES

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It is a delight to discover the second exhibition of cardboard sculpture by Charlotte Duffy at Concrete Wardrobe on Broughton Street, writes John Ross Maclean.

Entitled HIGHBROW, the core of the show features heads of five out-of-work philosophers magically fashioned from recycled cardboard.

At once lugubrious, funny and oddly poignant, they make startling statements, such as ‘My name is Nietzsche: May I take your order?’ (right).

Below: ‘Out of work Mill had an interest in a field he had no interest in.’