- Trio set off on charity bike ride
- Photos 'of Bismarck sinking' emerge
- Warning issued about dangerous gas
- Neighbour rescues woman from fire
- Man held over £85,000 drugs find
- Fund for 'climate justice' launched
- Scorching day for marathon runners
- Anti-independence campaign 'soon'
- Saltire Games ban 'ridiculous'
- Park waterfall death man named
Features
Interview: Harry Belafonte, singer
He fought for civil rights alongside Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Marlon Brando, Barack Obama’s mother reckons he’s the best-looking man on the planet and he has had hit records galore, but Harry Belafonte is suspicious of celebrities who write about their lives. So how come he has written a memoir and documentary about his own?
Get ahead, get a hat
From rock stars to royalty, headwear is enjoying a fashion revival among both men and women, and Scottish milliners are leading the charge
Fuel poverty has prompted a revival of peat-cutting on Lewis video
IT IS early one morning in May, the Hebridean sky huge and blue, and Norman Macleod and Peter Urpeth, two old pals from Lewis, are walking out on to the moor, tools slung over their shoulders, ready for another day at the peats.
We are a mile or so inland from the village of Back, in the north-east of the island.
Tom Kitchin: A whole roast pig is more than a meal – I think it’s fair to say it’s an event in itself’
The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations are imminent, and for many it means a day off work, a community party, a celebratory afternoon tea or getting a crowd of friends and family together. For me, there’s nothing that makes a celebration more memorable than sharing great food.
Travel: Glen Tanar, Aboyne, Aberdeenshire
It says something about the architecture of the 19th century that the outbuildings and servants’ quarters of stately homes can today have as much charm as the grand buildings they were built up around.
Travel: Oman
The donkey caravan emerged where the rocks above us met the deep blue of the sky, plodding down an ancient trade route from the Omani mountain hamlet of Aqabat Al Hamra, which had no road access.
Restaurant review: The Pelican Café 1,377 Argyll Street, Glasgow
It’s a Tuesday night in May in Glasgow’s West End, and although business is relatively slow Jason Harvie can still look out over a pretty impressive number of diners.
Will Slater: ‘Even in 1977 street parties seemed anachronistic’
Next week the children will get an extra day off school to mark the Queen’s diamond jubilee. For this they are very grateful. They were grateful last year too, when the royal wedding gave them another day off.
Interview: Jilli Blackwood, designer and artist
TEXTILE designer and artist Jilli Blackwood’s talent was recognised early on. By the legendary fashion icon Jean Muir, no less, when Blackwood was still at Glasgow School of Art and the promising student was able to show her some of her designs. “She was an incredible woman,” says Blackwood.
Wine: ‘Their infectious enthusiasm holds these events together’
Although the Three Wise Men came from the East and their vinous counterparts (the Three Wine Men) are from the south, all six are associated with tidings of great cheer. While the Wine Men’s focus may be more earthly, their approach is equally evangelical.
Ruth Walker: ‘Life is busy and sometimes a person just don’t have time to finish their sentences’
We’ve had weeks of enjoyable schadenfreude at the revelation that David Cameron signed off his texts to Rebekah Brooks with LOL. The poor sap.
Louisa Pearson: ‘Does formal volunteering require wearing a tux or ballgown?’
Do you remember the Berlin Wall? I do. We went on a school trip to see it in the late 1980s, when it was still intact and policed by armed guards. Souvenir Checkpoint Charlie T-shirts were on sale there.
Ruth Walker: Through hell and high water
To complete the latest extreme endurance challenge, you need to be one Tough Mudder
Chitra Ramaswamy: ‘We have some history with this beautiful length of coast. We tried to go once before but the weather was so bad that all we saw was the inside of our tent’
It’s a miserable Wednesday morning in early May on the west coast, where C and I are on holiday. At least that's what we called it before we left home. Now we're after a new name, something more representative. Purgatory, perhaps?
Lifelines: Anne Chilton on family histories
I have recently started to take an interest in my family’s history, and an elderly great aunt gave me a huge box of old photographs.
Interview: Morag Macpherson, textile designer
FOR a designer inspired by the world around her – travels to Japan, Cambodia, Morocco, the US – it should be no surprise to discover that Morag Macpherson’s most important commission to date is from Manhattan's newest, chicest destination hotel.
City guide: Annapolis, Maryland, USA
THE CAPITAL of the US state of Maryland, on Chesapeake Bay at the mouth of the Severn River, the city of Annapolis owes its birth to the water and it continues to be its lifeblood.
Travel: Hotel Plaza Athenee, Paris
IN THIS, its centenary year, the Plaza Athenee, with its art deco steel and glass canopy, baskets of tumbling red flowers and scarlet awnings, is as attractive as in its first flush of youth, when Josephine Baker and Rudolph Valentino gayly danced across its polished marble floors.
Walk of the week: Ettrick Water, Selkirk
SELKIRK bannocks are great – Queen Victoria is said to have enjoyed a taste when she visited the Borders town. Despite royal approval, it is the appreciation of our four-year-old daughter that counts.
Travel: Goa, India
Goa’s reputation as a destination for alternative culture is well deserved, but head off the beaten track to discover its true mix of flavours
Interview: Oliver Shute, chef and food entrepreneur
Oliver Shute is putting Bambi and Thumper back on our dining tables, finds Janet Christie
Andrew Hoyle: ‘Our son was soon plundering the pond with the ferocious intensity of a Faroese trawlerman’
MAY have hit paydirt in my ceaseless quest for maximum entertainment of our three children, coupled with minimum financial outlay by me: it’s called tadpoles.
Nil by mouth: Opening up to oral hygiene
ORAL health – or the lack of it – is an indicator of general well-being, so it’s time to sort out your hygiene regime
1 comment
Lifelines: Anne Chilton on cross-communication
Q: I HAVE fallen out with my best friend. She took something I said the wrong way and now avoids me, and I don’t know how to get things back to how they were. We have known each other for 30 years and have always been there for each other.
Wine: ‘North-eastern Italy is open to experimentation’
A FREQUENT complaint, particularly about French and Italian wine producers, used to be their reluctance to learn from the New World. Equally, many have ascribed a similar conservatism to the top levels of the British wine trade.
Ruth Walker: ‘11pm on a Saturday is when a lady is at her most frisky. I’m gutted I slept through it’
SATURDAY night, 11pm. I've checked my diary to be certain on this one, and I can categorically confirm that, for at least the last four Saturdays on the trot, I have been curled up, foetus-like, in bed – my own bed – by this time.
Louisa Pearson: ‘I’ve had alcoholic neighbours who shouted all night instead of sleeping’
When the sheep in the field next to where I live baa, it’s exactly the same note as my mobile phone’s ringtone. As you can imagine, this leads to some confusion
Restaurant review: Café Royal Oyster Bar, West Register St., Edinburgh
IS THERE a more beautiful or atmospheric restaurant in Edinburgh – or Britain – than the Café Royal Oyster Bar? This, as I’ve just explained to my daughter as she took a break from grappling with the hidden meanings of Macbeth, is a rhetorical question: of course there isn’t.
Tom Kitchin: ‘We’re getting excited about vegetarian cooking again – and quite rightly so’
VEGETARIAN cooking has tended to suffer from a reputation of being bland and boring. In the past, set menus and dining out have sometimes meant the same few choices for veggies.
Fiona Leith: Let’s give dancing a birl
BLINK and you would have missed it. Turn your head to check where the latest in a succession of champagne corks had landed and you wouldn’t even have heard it, such was its desire to fall under the radar of conversation and rocket through the atmosphere to my ear alone with a stealthy lack of fuss.
Interview: Polly Higgins, lawyer and campaigner
Lawyer Polly Higgins wants ecocide to be an international crime, and cites early family conversations in west-coast Scotland as sowing the seeds of a showdown for the future of our planet at next month’s Earth Summit in Rio. By Ruth Walker
ECA Fashion Show preview video
Moths, machines and the faded façades of Tuscan cities – fashion students at Edinburgh College of Art take inspiration where they find it. Now we showcase catwalk creations from the final collections of eight stars of the future – you saw them here first. By Janet Christie
Interview: Alan Cumming, actor
Back from Hollywood with his one-man Macbeth, Alan Cumming talks goats, poodles and murder. By Anna Burnside
Peter Ross: The ballad of lonely Joe
WHAT happened was he broke down outside our house. A wee car with a wee man in it. The ignition was skittering, stuttering, wouldn’t start.
Restaurant review: The Lui Restaurant, Invercauld Road, Ballater
HAVING spent a chilly day on the river without catching a glimpse of a fish, we decided to start with a couple of dishes in honour of absent friends.
Jeremy Watson: ‘It’s on with the trainers to take on daughter two‘
SOME people of my acquaintance have suggested that I gave up running just because my daughter beat me in the one and only official 10k race we ever had. This may be cruel but it is probably correct.
Interview: Staycation guru, Annabella Forbes
Annabella Forbes knows nothing beats local knowledge and friendly hosts.
Wine: New Zealand Riesling Challenge produces a bumper crop
B ecause the many variables make straight comparisons between wines so difficult, Neil Charles-Jones, of Mud House Wine Group, resolved to create something much closer to a level playing field.
1 commentLouisa Pearson: ‘I haven’t noticed many boulangeries in Scotland (no, Greggs doesn’t count)’
WHAT makes 2012 significant? Bear in mind there are several wrong answers and one right one to this question.
Ruth Walker: It’s more than skin-deep, cosmetic tattooing changes lives
TATTOOS. It seems that everyone has one these days. Whether it's a tramp stamp à la Christina Aguilera, something a little more esoteric, like Jessica Alba’s (she has the Sanskrit symbol for a lotus flower on her wrist), or a full-on body inking in the David Beckham league, all the celebs are now wearing their art on their sleeves.
1 commentRuth Walker: ‘I’m seriously considering attaching the teenager’s stuff to her with string’
FIRST, there was the mobile phone theft. It was whipped right out of her pocket while she supped a pint of snakebite or Diamond White, or whatever it is the young people drink these days.
Lifelines: Bernadette Lynass on problem neighbours
NIGHTLY NOISES
My neighbours are keeping me awake at night with their noisy love-making. I really don’t know how to broach the subject with them and so have ended up having to sleep on the sofa.
I don’t want to cause my neighbours any embarrassment but I need my sleep. Do I say nothing or risk causing friction between us?
Interview: Geoffrey Beattie, author of ‘Chasing Lost Times: A Father and Son Reconciled Through Running’
THERE is a story in Geoffrey Beattie’s new book that makes my blood go cold. It tells of how he and his young family had moved into a house in the middle of nowhere, on the moors outside Sheffield.
Travel: St Ermin’s Hotel, London
YOU want a discreet hideout right in the heart of London? Go where the spies went. Get off the tube at St James Park, turn right into Caxton Place, right again into an elegant courtyard, and there you are – its name above the foyer in the least obtrusive lights you could imagine: St Ermin’s Hotel.
Walk of the week: Faskally Wood, Pitlochry
FULL of the cold, I set off on a walk with the nagging thought that my ailment might be flu – or worse.
Leaving Pitlochry, the hustle and bustle gradually died away until the A9 was behind and Faskally Wood enveloped the senses.
City guide: Abu Dhabi
NOW it may seem that in a country where summer temperatures top 50°C, the opportunities for meaningful sports-related activity are limited.
Travel: Kirkenes Snow Hotel, Arctic Norway
TIME for bed. I wore merino wool base layers, pyjamas, hat, muffler, balaclava and socks enhanced by heating pads. I was snuggled into a sleeping bag capable of withstanding temperatures of –30°C. I was still cold. Understandable, perhaps, as this was the Kirkenes Snow Hotel in Arctic Norway. Ron, my partner, and I flew for about two hours from Oslo to Kirkenes, an ice-free port inside the Arctic Circle, to stay in the Snow Hotel and then view the somewhat elusive, ethereal, mysterious aurora borealis – the northern lights.
Tom Kitchin: From Orkney scallops to Stornoway black pudding, there is so much to celebrate
I TRULY believe we have some of the best food and drink in the world here in Scotland and recent reports have shown the sector is booming.
Tom Kitchin: ‘There are some great gluten free recipes that are delicious whether you’re gluten free or not’
AT BOTH the Kitchin and its sister restaurant Castle Terrace, we’re welcoming an increasing number of guests with specific dietary requirements, from vegetarian to dairy-free and gluten-free.
Interview: Vanessa Paradis, actress
ACTRESS, singer, model, mother – Vanessa Paradis remains an enigma, and even when faced with rumours about her relationship with Johnny Depp she still manages to keep mum
- Family mourn death of Glasgow ‘fight’ schoolboy
- Rangers takeover: Duff & Phelps threaten legal action against BBC
- Today’s youth not fit to be employed, says car firm Arnold Clark
- Rangers administration: Fans fear Duff & Phelps claims could scare off Green
- Rangers takeover: triple penalty punishment enough, says Johnston
- Alistair Darling leads ‘No to independence’ fight over tea and biscuits
- Scottish independence: SNP flip-flops over Nato
- Scottish Independence: SNP ‘won’t be Yes campaign’s only voice’
- Scottish independence: Alex Salmond’s pledge to sign up 1m voters
- Today’s youth not fit to be employed, says car firm Arnold Clark
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Weather for Edinburgh
Sunday 27 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 13 mph
Wind direction: North east
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 9 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 15 mph
Wind direction: North east
