BRANCHES everywhere. Plans are afoot, UK-wide, to force home-owners to have the trees in their gardens safety-inspected, lest they topple and hurt people or vehicles.
The British Standards Institute, in their Mugabe fatigues, want all trees to be checked out once every three years and once every five years by an arboriculturist (he'll check your cholesterol while he's at it). And that's an order.
Estimated mini
mum cost of a professional tree inspection, 70 quid. The BSI, urging you to stop foaming at the mouth, stress they are putting safety first.
Six people a year are killed by toppling trees. The probability of death by tree is a million to one, so next time you're in Princes Street Gardens or the Botanics, quaffing a can of Special lager, take a calculator.
Or see your local tree surgeon. You might get it on the National Health. Ignore the BSI's warning and you could be hanged for high treeson.
Disorderly queue As Edinburgh slips benevolently into its season of free entertainment, a reminder that the women who ate Scotland (and are planning to have Wales and Ireland for seconds) can be seen juddering along Princes Street any day of the week. An entertainment in themselves.
You weren't aware that 80,000 souls in Scotland suffer from eating disorders. What does all this have to do with the price of pork sausages in Tesco, you're asking?
An unholy row Here's somebody who evidently is not overenthusiastic about what emanates from the Vatican. It's Susan Sarandon, preaching: "This particular Pope is not one of my favourites. I am pretty suspicious of him and my only message to him is that he should become more compassionate and more involved in what the world needs now, instead of his archaic kind of outdated misogynist infrastructure the Church has going now."
Afterwords . . . . from kd lang, due at the Festival Theatre on July 30: "Life is so impermanent that it's not about somebody else or things around me, it's about knowing you are completely alone in the world and being content inside." I know the feeling.
The full article contains 357 words and appears in Edinburgh Evening News newspaper.
