Breaking news

Planning permission is sought to convert the former Rufflander Safety shop into a two-bedroom ground-and-basement-level dwelling at 89 Broughton Road (Ref. 13/00247/FUL).

Congratulations to Marion McLeod, who was born in 1913 and has just celebrated her 100th birthday! writes Leitham Park Care Home's Alison Cavender.

Born into a rural community in the far north of Scotland, Marion grew up fluent in both Gaelic and English. She worked in a baker's shop for many years and, although a quiet lassie, was popular with the customers. 

Sadly,  her marriage was short-lived as her husband was killed in World War II.

Last month we featured local David Watt's article on the unruly Rodney Street triangle – a tangled and overgrown 'dumping ground' crying out for some attention (Issue 214).

Watt suggested retaining the central tree and inserting a bench, or, alternatively, using the space to store the wheelie bins which currently block pavements hereabouts.

In the month which saw high-street stalwart HMV plunge into administration, Broughton is lucky to retain perhaps the finest of Edinburgh’s few surviving independent music retailers: Vinyl Villains on Elm Row.

VV has been buying and selling since 1983 and, according to founder Adam Waters, owes its occasionally precarious continuance to people 'with a discerning taste in music, who refuse to be brainwashed into accepting the regurgitated gunge that passes for culture today’.

One Caitlin Thomson has applied for planning permission to position 2 'original' Edinburgh police boxes on north-central Edinburgh pavements. Both would serve as coffee kiosks. 

This handsome ginger cat is called Ossian, and he's gone missing.

The two-year-old male – distinctive for his unusual curly coat – did what most of us feel like doing when builders enter the house: ran for the hills in terror.

The problem is: Ossian is normally a confirmed indoor cat  with no previous inclination to explore the outside world. He is likely to be lost, frightened and cold in the Logan Street/Eyre Crescent area.

Anyone out there ever heard of Lieutenant Colonel Francis James Scott?

We don't know where he was born (he appears to be settled much later at Mount Lodge, Portobello), but in a codicil to his will of 1820, the year before his death, he had sufficient local ties to leave £2,000 in trust for ‘the maintenance of an Episcopal [boys' and girls'] school or schools in inseparable connexion with the Episcopalian Chapel commonly called St James Chapel Broughton Place Edinburgh'. 

It's the Little Things this month at the Union Gallery features comparatively small works by contemporary Scottish artists.

There is no overarching theme, just original works that won't require a wall the size of a bus and a bank vault to match in order to enjoy them. A few favourites are reviewed below.

Khushi's Edinburgh seek planning permission to extend the restaurant and create new office space behind the premises at 10–11 Antigua Street (Ref. 12/04541/FUL). 

The project would create 247 sq. m. of additional floorspace for restaurant/café use (with a total occupancy of 225), and 77 sq. m. of additional space for financial, professional and other services.

The New Town and Broughton Community Council  (NTBCC) has given a general welcome to the notion of improving Leith Walk, but has serious doubts about some aspects of the Council's preliminary designs. (NTBCC's area of interest runs south of McDonald Rd.)

Transport Convener Patrick Hutton said road users would be pleased by resurfacing of the thoroughfare 'after all the damage inflicted during the tram [utilities-related] MUDFA works'.