WALKIES! The Edinburgh Festival Voluntary Guides are on the march again. They'll be escorting folks, from home and abroad, down the Royal Mile on walking tours these next four Mondays.
For free. These volunteers love the job because they love the city and delight in telling people all about the Royal Mile.
Guides depart Cannonball House, yards from the Esplanade, en route for Holyrood between 10-11am every day except Sunday a
nd between 2-3pm every afternoon.
I have to hope the walkers will be advised to cover their eyes when they pass any of the too many shops shamelessly flogging "authentic Scottish" tat.
Chairman of the EFVGA in its 60th year David Strachan, a former head teacher at Bruntsfield school, asks me to plug the guides' free illustrated talks on Wednesday evenings at eight in the hallowed City Chambers. See where city councillors scoff their austerity lunches. Posterity, perhaps?
All in the timing Times, and I mean financial times, would be insufferably bad for the Jazz Festival were it not for its sponsors. Among them this year, the St James's Place Partnership, the wealth management specialists headquartered in moneybags Melville Street.
They brought one of the festival's biggest acts, singer-pianist Buddy Greco, from California to the Queen's Hall for what might well prove to be his farewell to the UK.
Says St James's senior partner George Barrett: "We are delighted to support the jazzfest and we could well be back next year. A positive pleasure for me to meet an icon like Mr Greco in person."
Hill of an idea Windmills on my mind. Your son or daughter's leaving school and job-hunting. Don't put them in banking, insurance or, God forbid, the civil service. Have them get a degree in wind turbine dynamics.
We're going to need 7000 of these damned blots on the landscape to boost the nation's energy supply.
Don't want to put the wind up you, there's one coming soon to a hill near you . . . Calton Hill, Blackford Hill, Corstorphine Hill, Shrub Hill. To Church Hill, even.
The full article contains 349 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
