The Arcade can be bad for your health

Published on Monday 21 April 2008 09:11

FILTHY. Mucky. Yuch. Walk at your peril through the North Bridge Arcade of retailers (one's even a cafe with tables outside its door) linking the bridge with Cockburn Street. The world, including Environmental Health, is passing it by.

God knows – and I wish He'd care – when this once-pleasurable walkway's marble-ish surface last saw detergent and water. The mass of chewing gum has congealed for so long, it's now white-to-jet black. Rubbish is strewn the day long and nobody seems to sweep up one week to the other.

In short, nobody cares. And you don't read about this in guide book Edinburgh. Aw the hell with it, darling! What's for the tea and let's get on with life.

Stag and Cowes

When Willie met Harry. What you certainly can't tell your son . . . I want you to grow up to be like William and Harry. You'd much prefer him to be a responsible citizen. Earning a respectable living. Not living off the public purse.

Reference the princes' latest frolic. Predictably, you paid for it. They booked that RAF Chinook helicopter (35 million a piece and our lads are crying out for them in Afghanistan) to whisk them from London to a cousin's stag on the Isle of Wight.

Always better to be tipsy in Cowes than in Knightsbridge, though doubtless the paparazzi disagree. Oh, and Harry, snap out of it! Be a good chap and slip me one of those Carlsberg Specials.

On reflection, not a good week for the RAF, with a pilot court martialed for flying low over Carnoustie and the playboy princes giving the service a bad name.

Sad tidings

Sad to hear of the passing of Barnaby Hawkes, maitre d' at the former Chambertin, vanished like so much else from the George Hotel. Gone without so much as a murmur. It's a hard world out there.

Smooth-tongued, ever- gracious Barnaby well knew how to run a stylish room. A certain elegance about him, lost in the transformation of the hotel.

Still on a sombre note, Ann Stanley, a career civil servant and, latterly, for many years faithful companion at Cammo Road to the late colourful bandleader Cam Robbie, has also passed on. They made a memorable couple.