An item of "Breaking News". Will appear on the Breaking News page and the front page.
Love them or loathe them, Edinburgh's trams have just come a big step closer.
Contractors today handed over nearly 3km of completed and tested track between Edinburgh Airport and Gogarburn.
This morning, Spurtle joined journalists and photographers from all over the country on an inaugural trip.
It is difficult to convey just how enjoyable this experience was.
Spirits buoyed by the lovely spring-like weather, Friends of the Rocheid Path made great progress last weekend and successfully brought order to a row of hollies at the west gate.
The plan now is to clear away basal growth to make them look more like trees again. Work on 8 of the 12 trees is complete, so one more day of action should complete the task. Then, hopefully, the Council will remove the mountain of debris.
The application for a residential and commercial development at 14, 16, 20, 24, 26 Beaverhall Road has at last received full planning consent (Ref. 11/03374/FUL).
Springfield Properties and MD and RG Rutterford propose 80 dwelling spaces, 288 sq.m. commercial floorspace, and new roads and infrastructure.
A migraine-inducing blizzard of new illuminated and non-illuminated signs is planned by Tesco Stores Ltd for the branch at 7 Broughton Road (Ref. 13/00540/ADV).
We urge readers to don sunglasses, visit the link above, and have a good laugh.
There has been a distinct buzz surrounding the solo exhibition of new works by Audrey Grant at Broughton Street's Union Gallery.
Even before the doors opened on Friday evening, 9 of the 25 paintings hanging had been sold to buyers around the world – unseen except on the gallery's website. In the 3 days since, a further 7 have been purchased. These are unusually fast sales.
So what's going on?
'It's not a sex shop, it's an erotic boutique. And we're not corrupting anybody.'
So says Heather Craig, who with business partner James Anderson opened Broughton Street's newest shop – The White Rabbit – on 1 February.
We hate awkward silences as much as the next hyperlocal, but this time the elephant in the room was entirely welcome.
Benign, beautiful and almost irresistibly huggable, she features in the window of Concrete Wardrobe on Broughton Street, and was attracting frequent second glances from pedestrians there as we looked on this afternoon.
Are you fit? Are you a man or woman aged over 18 and ravishingly attractive? Are you able to keep smiling even with one leg wrapped behind your ear and a pompom stuck up your nose?
Of course you are ... Broughton has that effect on everyone.
All right, then – Do you fancy strutting your stuff at Murrayfield in front of 67,800 appreciative Welsh and Scottish rugby supporters on Saturday 9 March?
The March issue of the Spurtle is poised in the jaws of a printing machine. It will shortly be chomped, swallowed, digested and ... um ... brought forth glistening into the daylight ready for distribution across Broughton over the next few days.
Issue 216 devotes a whole page to mixed news about a troublesome void at the heart of the neighbourhood, It goes on to examine eating, drinking, collapse and death, art, dystopia, paradoxes, dullness, Bohemian rhapsodies, a mysterious black box and more bouncing optimism from local fitness guru Tracy Griffen.
Local resident Bill Giles has responded to our article on access to the private garden in Drummond Place (Issue 215, ‘Grass to stay greener’). We reproduce his words in full below.