Breaking news

As you read this, surprise copies of the May Spurtle are already popping up across the barony like campervans on the forecourts of Fife.

Issue 328 begins with locals pleading for a good night’s sleep, a sad reflection, a grand span, disputed sunshine and some signs of the times.

Page 2 continues with yet another sign, this time the shrimp-gargling and nipple-tassel kind, followed by moves to ensure local voices are heard. Then we cover potential noise, bad drivers getting away with it, mounting costs and Fantasy Island fog.

Can't understand it.

Fruit and veg supplies are rarely reliable, but other departments never seem to be out of stock.

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The Living Memory Association, based at Ocean Terminal, has recently been given a Heritage Fund award, writes project worker Russell Clegg. We’re using it to start a new reminiscence project – ‘Away for the Messages’ – on shops and retail history in and around Edinburgh.

We are looking for folk to contribute their stories, lived experiences and indeed photos and shop-based ephemera to the project (we can scan these and include in our current exhibition).

Fly-post-free zone. No. 10 in an occasional photo series celebrating Spurtleshire's street-name signs.

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Lovely weather for a walk.

No. 9 in an occasional photo series celebrating Spurtleshire street-name signs.

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Recent work to restore the exterior basement stonework of 19 Hart Street has revealed traces of an old shop frontage.

On the Broughton Place elevation it reads, ‘CONFECTIONS—M.T. SCOTT—CIGARETTES’. Round the corner on Hart Street, we think we can decipher a palimpsest of ‘GROCERIES’ and ‘CONFECTIONER’.

To discover more about the place’s history, Spurtle embarked on a tumultuous rummage through censuses, statutory registers, valuation rolls, Post Office directories and local newspapers. Here’s what we found.

April sunshine. Spring in the step. 

No. 8 in an occasional photo series celebrating Spurtleshire street-name signs.

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The idea that visiting a gallery can be a healing balm is manifested in Shipping Roots, by Keg de Souza. This is the current exhibition at Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden.

From the first moment you enter the building, your nostrils and lungs are filled with the deeply calming aroma of eucalyptus. Eucalyptus is widely used as a natural cold remedy, by decreasing mucus and expanding the bronchi and bronchioles of your lungs.

Saddened to hear Narcissus Flowers has shut permanently at short notice.

Shop ceased trading on Thursday 30 March.

Horrible shock for staff (informed the day before). Big loss for Broughton Street.

More on this story in Issue 328, published on 1 May.

Got a view? Tell us at spurtle@hotmail.co.uk or Twitter 

This is a longer version (with new reactions afterwards) of the article which appeared in Issue 327.

Readers are doubtless familiar with the recent background of short-term lets (STLs) in Edinburgh – namely, that following the passing by the Scottish Government of a law enabling local authorities to designate 'Short-term let planning control areas', City of Edinburgh Council (CEC) immediately announced the establishment of such a control area, covering the whole local-authority area, which came into force on 5 September 2022.