An item of "Breaking News". Will appear on the Breaking News page and the front page.
When most people imagine a coral atoll, they mostly think of sparkling seas and blue skies, of white beaches and the wind singing gently through the tops of the palm trees. Reality, though, is rarely perfect.
New to Broughton – Life Story is apparently set to open this afternoon.
Interested locals report a flurry of comings and goings, last-minute arrivals and departures, speculative parking, a palpable sense of anticipation.
Based in the former Moviebank (the former former Post Office) at 53 London Street, the store promises 'a unique shopping experience'.
A long-running domestic planning saga appears to have reached its end.
The Council has granted consent for a scheme to redesign internal arrangements and, crucially, increase the amount of daylight entering a top-floor flat on Bellevue Terrace (Ref. 12/03250/LBC).
Deep breaths, everyone ... perhaps take a sip of water while you still can.
Tramworks scheduled for the next few weeks 'have the potential to impact on traffic flows, pedestrian access and utility services to properties' in the East End of the city.
They are as follows:
19 November (11pm–6.30am)
1 York Place / 4–19 North St Andrew Street/34–42 St Andrew Square / 1–15 Multrees Walk
Water interruption
20 November
York Place
The Scottish Government yesterday launched a map breaking down the incidence of Scottish house fires by postcode. We look at these from a Spurtleshire perspective, i.e. those areas in which we report, distribute or take a keen, neighbourly interest.
In 2011–12, four areas of Edinburgh were in the worst category, suffering 70 or more fires. They were: EH4, EH6 (Leith and Newhaven), EH7 (between central Edinburgh and Leith) and EH14.
The EH1 area (including the St James Centre, Leith and Broughton Streets) suffered between 10 and 14 fires.
These wonderfully eccentric window arrangements at Narcissus have brought a welcome touch of the Hebrides to Broughton Street this month.
The various assemblages – part-bird-part-fish, float-flowers, Domestos-chickens, torpedo-bladders and beastie-buoys – are the work of Skye carpenter and artist 'Beads'.
To some, it is reminiscent of a maple leaf borne aloft on an autumn breeze; to others, of a herring gull just after being deliberately hit by a speeding Range Rover en route to the Magnum Bar on Albany Street.
It is in fact the new Alpine House, currently under construction at the Botanic Garden (Breaking news, 19.12.11; 23.1.12).
This specimen was found lying wet and bedraggled in the rain on Gloucester Lane last week.
Now known as 'Gloucester', he has a comfortable home and has dried out considerably.
However, the finder is anxious to reunite him with his original owner – probably a child or sentimental adult with a poor grip on reality.
Posters went up on lamp-posts across Stockbridge at the weekend, but so far no-one has come forward to claim him.
Spotted on Broughton Street last week – possibly the latest discarded Christmas tree of 2011 or the earliest discarded Christmas tree of 2012.
Either way, its brown and withered appearance is a welcome, miserablist counterblast to the fairy-dust-encrusted, Christmas-starts-in-September, marketing bollox of 'Edinburgh sparkles' etcetera.
How about some more realistic slogans for the capital this year, properly rooted in Calvinist pessimism and self-disgust, trams frustration, social meltdown and wretched incredulity at the possibility of things ever getting better?
Locals may remember Spurtle reader Richard Burrell, the former Bellevue resident who recently moved away to take up a Modern Studies teaching post at Earlston in the Borders.
Next summer, Richard will lead a party of 10 young people to Peru, and is now organising an auction in Edinburgh to help raise the necessary funds for himself.