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We are all of us struggling through the Recession in our own ways. Hard-pressed residents of the Regent, Royal and Carlton Terraces are clearly tightening belts in Austerity Scotland by eschewing fancy sports clubs and smartening up their communal back green instead.

Bellevue's Drummond Tennis Club members are celebrating Andy Murray's Olympic win in style, with this new gold back-rest for one of their benches.

They haven't gone mad, though, and have thriftily left the bottom-rest in characteristic glossy green.

Local rumour has it that adjacent club furniture may be star-spangled by this time next week. Watch this space.

Union Gallery's offering this month is a group exhibition featuring work by 12 contemporary Scottish artists, most of whom will be familiar to regular visitors here.

A new report, due to go before the Transport, Infrastructure and Environment Committee on Thursday next week, says lessons have been learned from this summer's floods in Edinburgh.

City of Edinburgh's Coalition partners are delivering on a promise made after May's election by setting up an Empty Homes Task Force.

The proportion of unoccupied homes in the capital has decreased from 2.4 per cent in 2008 to 2 per cent in 2011 (below the 2.8% Scottish average), but in December 2011 there were still nearly 1,500 privately owned homes here which had been unoccupied for more than 6 months, 967 of them for more than a year. All this at a time when many (particularly young) people in the city are struggling to find an affordable place to live.

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The drift bottle and message currently hitting the headlines for breaking the Guinness World Record as the ‘Oldest message in a bottle’ is of special Broughton interest, writes local retired marine scientist Jim Adams.