Our friend and colleague Ross Maclean died last night.

Thanks to reader John Ross who first alerted us to it.

Spurtleshire's answer to Inverfarigaig.

Joseph Pearce, part of the Boda Bars chain, has applied for planning consent to build a temporary, partly covered seating area for drinking and dining on the pavement outside its premises at 23 Elm Row (Ref. 21/05858/FUL and Ref. 21/05859/LBC).

Dear Spurtle,

This is a bin in Scotland Street.

During the storm on Friday 26 November, it was empty and blown into the kerb. It is proving difficult to deal with. The normal vehicle cannot lift it and, as it is full it requires more than two men to push into position. The Council is dealing with the results of the storm across the city and problems in streets with far higher density and footfall than Scotland Street.

Has anyone else spotted this absolutely huge Bellevue squirrel?

Has anyone else noticed this absolutely huge Bellevue squirrel?

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This is interesting: the Ingleby Gallery’s virtual viewing room, part of its Instalments series, in which local artist Jessica Harrison describes the thoughts and techniques behind her transformations of found objects.

In this installation, the reworked pieces form two separate series; one playing with Bone China Figures of women, the other with classical statues as pictured and supposedly available in Online Shopping.

Despite Covid, despite shortages of material and skilled labour, despite unexpected ‘utility conflicts’ at key junctions, the Trams to Broughton project is within the £207.3M budget and remains on schedule for revenue service to begin in the spring of 2023.

City of Edinburgh Council is celebrating with a seasonal blizzard of statistics. Since November 2019, it says, the project has:

Wedding ring found on Albany Street. Call 07858 355 884.