Breaking news

This fluffy black cat has been missing from St Vincent Street since Easter Sunday. A well-known local character, 'Bear' wears a black collar and is extremely friendly.

He may well be the latest in a line of local felines who have simply taken it into their heads to go on 'Spring manoeuvres', or he may temporarily be staying with one of his many admirers.

However, his unannounced absence is causing great anxiety at home, and any information on his whereabouts would be very welcome.

Please check your sheds and outbuildings.

Contact: Mob. 07733264331

Whisky Kiss are representing Broughton in the Big Apple for New York Tartan Week, writes bassist Iain MacPhail.

The main gig for the local 'souped-up ceilidh band' was to both open and close the biggest event of the Week, namely the 10th Anniversary 'Dressed to Kilt' Fashion Show.

On this page is more street-art spotted in Broughton over recent days.

On the corner of Gayfield Square and Street appears this spray-paint stencilled red fox, previously seen across North Edinburgh from Newhaven to Warriston Road.

The musical spinster (below) appears on a wall formerly occupied by a clench-fisted ghoul observed just over a year ago in Breaking news (14.3.11).

The Howard Hotel (at 34 Great King Street) seeks planning permission to develop 7 new bedrooms in a disused mews building at 16 Cumberland Street South East Lane, a partially derelict one at No. 17, and adjacent garden and car parking (Ref. 12/01165/FUL).

Newly arrived in Broughton (we think late last month), this cheerful face with scarf spills from a blocked-up window in Gayfield Square.

The portrait has been applied to paper, carefully cut out, and stuck to the wall.

The subject looks as though she has been drawn from life – or at least from a photograph.

This Spurtle spotter initially thought it represented a Proclaimer getting in touch with his feminine side, but was swiftly disabused by someone who knows about such things.

Surrounded by the remnants of my half-eaten Easter eggs this weekend, I was searching for something to make that didn’t involve chocolate but was still distinctly seasonal. This thought process led me down a rather savoury path and I arrived at a gorgeous recipe for asparagus and smoked salmon tartlets. 

Contrary to first impressions, there is common ground in the work of Stewart Bremner and Kevin Low, who appear to make unlikely fellow exhibitors in 'Worlds Apart' at the Union Gallery this month.
 
Both start with a human mind observed. Bremner fixes first on himself, at a current or remembered point in time and space, examines that self in abstraction, and then plays with it through the seductively distorting medium of paint.
 

In Issues 203 and 205 we mentioned our chance discovery of and subsequent introduction to a relative of Ken Clark.

Clark was the designer responsible for arrranging the mural on East London Street's Waverley Exchange c.1964 (Issue 196).

The new Coop supermarket at 8 McDonald Road has been granted permission to extend its trading hours (Ref. 11/0420/FUL). From now on it will be open from 6.00am to 11.00pm (see Breaking news, 5.1.12).

It’s often said that April is the cruellest month (blimmin’ T.S. Eliot fans cluttering up the place) but we have to disagree.