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Since 1991, Broughton-based charity The Rock Trust has worked with young people aged 16–25 who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless across Edinburgh and the Lothians.

This includes young people in transitions, leaving care or home, and those involved in offending, alcohol or drug misuse.

Mist hung under the trees of Warriston Cemetery this afternoon.

Rain dripped steadily from the canopy above, gathered into rivulets, gurgled into the black loam beneath J. Dick Peddie’s Gothic arches.

Compartment Z, beside the Water of Leith, never attracted the same number of grand monuments one finds elsewhere in the cemetery. Perhaps its lack of popularity had something to do with a damp location at the foot of the hill, its proximity to the service entrance bridge from Warriston Road, or its former closeness to the Edinburgh and North Leith Railway track.

Summer is here and the Festival is upon us.

Soon the lanyard brigade will be strutting around like they own the place. We’ll be swamped by happy tourists whose faces turn sour when they see the rubbish, can't make fun of the trams, get pecked by gulls and drenched by the rain.

Soon the pavements will be clogged with over-enthusiastic snappers trying to take selfies on their oversized iPads with the castle or a faunlike bagpipe-playing man in the background.

This Barony Place resident went out on the evening of Tuesday 15 July and hasn’t come back.

He’s a four-year-old grey tabby with white front and legs, tabby elbow patches and a brown smudge on the right side of his nose. He’s chipped.

If you think you’ve seen Ruairi since Tuesday, or know where he is now, please email ruairi@orr-online.co.uk or Twitter @RPiscin

Ghost signs is the popular term used to describe those faded examples of hand-painted lettering found on buildings throughout the city.

Many date from the nineteenth century, and are interesting for the light they shed on the individuals who once occupied our streets with their more or less familiar busineses and occupations.

Redevelopment of the site at 1 Canonmills Bridge (currently home to Earthy) may be a step closer.

In May last year we reported how Glovart Holdings Ltd had finally received planning consent for its mix of  2 restaurants, 6 flats and 3 townhouses (Ref. 09/00830/FUL; Breaking news, 15.5.13). 

Forrest Group has appealed against Edinburgh Council’s decision on their internally illuminated digital display at 10 Croall Place (Ref. 14/00624/ADV).

We like these a lot – Greg Bryce’s Collected Works exhibiting in Whitespace’s gallery on Howe Street.

Bryce is an Edinburgh-based artist who studied at Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen and the Provinciale Hogeschool Limburg in Hasselt, Belgium, before completing a residency at the Konstepidemin organisation in Gothenburg in 2012. You can find out more about his general approach and previous work here.

I've always had trust issues with seafood (i.e. I don't trust it not to be hiding bones or bits of shell in a random mouthful).

But recently I've made my peace with white crabmeat and become quite the fan. I've even started cooking with it at home, although I've started at the easy end with this pasta sauce.

My recipe is a mash-up of a two recipes along the same theme that I've tried, dialling up this and dialling down that until it hit just the right spot.

Who can forget the carefree days of their youth, middle age or dotage when no wander through the summer countryside was complete without splitting open a Policeman’s helmet?

Or, to put it another way, splitting open the pod of a Himalayan balsam plant.

That delicious elastic tension, that exciting application of pressure, the sudden satisfying pop and expulsion of seed were surely Nature’s way of gently suggesting Humankind should invent bubble-wrap.

Not any more, though.