Breaking news

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The superb painting above is currently on show at the Gallery on the Corner (34 Northumberland Street). It is called Swanning Around (oil and acrylic on canvas) and is one of Claire Brown’s six works in an exhilarating and thought-provoking Spring exhibition.

Claire writes: ‘From an early age I have been a keen artist. I would say my initial love of drawing cartoon characters on paper progressed to my colourful creations on canvas.

April's issue of the Spurtle will be published online on 4 April, and distributed in classic paper and print throughout Broughton's barbers and hair salons, pubs, clubs, galleries, newsagents, libraries, and retailers of gifts, vegetables, fish, beans, books, chocolate and personal requisites. Subscribers' copies will arrive by super-fit messengers in Spandex bearing umbrellas.

A German-based artist plans to complete and install six original works along the Water of Leith sculpture trail this summer. But it is a development which one Broughton critic is already branding an 'affront to the people of Edinburgh'.

O.G. Gonflé – the 42-year-old Swiss post-redactionist and self-styled 'ideo-pole' now resident in Hamburg – has promised to commit up to half his 2010 Prix Oxygène award (€750,000) to the project, on condition that Creative Scotland provide match-funding.

Spring has sprung, which means you’ll want to be out and about rather than cooped up in your homes this month. Fortunately, we have found a few things for you to do so that your good intentions do not end with a vague meander to the newsagents for a choc-ice.

Happy the man, and happy he alone,

He who can call today his own:

He who secure within can say,

'Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.

Be fair, or foul, or rain, or shine,

The joys I have possesed, in spite of Fate, are mine.

Not heaven itself upon the past has power,

But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.'

Locals have been left puzzled by an organisation appealing for old clothes, mobile telephones and laptops.

The 'Clothing Collection Team' (CCT) have been distributing plastic bags and accompanying flyers to residents in the Bellevue area recently.

Their leaflet reads: 'You can help people who really need support. The items that you donate will reach those who do not have possibility to purchase new footwear and clothing. All garments will be carefully sorted and worn again'.

A Dr Campbell of Stirling proposes to change offices at Unit 1, 12 Gayfield Square into a flat (Ref. 11/00719/FUL). The application has temporarily stalled owing to insufficient location-plan details being submitted. Architect's and contractor's banners on the railings, and a large debris-filled skip outside, suggest some kind of work may already have begun.

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Following closure yesterday at 4pm of nominations in the Scottish Parliamentary election (5 May), confirmed candidates for the two constituencies straddling Broughton (and the Lothian list) are as follows:

Edinburgh Central

Marco Biagi, Scottish National Party (SNP)

Sarah Boyack, Scottish Labour Party

Alex Cole-Hamilton, Scottish Liberal Democrats

Iain McGill, Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party

Edinburgh Northern and Leith

Drummond Community High School and the 51st Scottish Brigade have joined forces to send almost 5,000 books to East Africa, reports Kenya Coordinator and school librarian Annie Scanlon (second right).

They will be transported in an Army supply ship with other equipment, and should arrive in Kenya by July.

Originally saved from a skip by a resourceful teacher at a decommissioned Army school in Germany, the books will be added to the stock of Drummond's two partnership secondary schools and an additional primary school.

Watch the moon at night from a boat at sea, and you may notice that its light appears to run in a glittering path straight towards you alone. You feel yourself specially favoured, honoured by this silver carpet between horizon and horizon. Turn 180º and that path is nowhere to be seen. It is a simple and somewhat chastening natural effect, but typical of how the sea can stimulate and intrigue observers: the ways it reflects and bends light, its paradoxical power and lack of solidity, its changing humours and endless capacity for interpretation.