Do you remember that last time Bob took Tod to a Burns supper at his club? That was the Saturday and they were so hungover on the Sunday, they were hardly fit enough to interview Tracey for the job of secretary, and that was the following Monday.

Anyway, she got the job and they were glad of it, well some of the time at least.

It’s our bard’s birthday the day. Robert Burns, born 25th January 1759 in Ayrshire, is famed the world oer for his romantic ballads and philosophical works.

For me, he was mair than that. He took me at the age o fifteen fae reading comics tae reading literature and it was literature written in Scots, my ane language.

Before Tod retired he had tae watch aw the schools he worked wie bring out the tartan and the bagpipes and the haggis on the 25th and for ain day only the bairns language was legitimised. Then the next day the Scots language books were put awa and it was back tae the auld Standard English.

Nae wonder many o they bairns struggled wie their literacy. Their hale lives were spelled out in Scots, grammar and aw, but that wisne allowed in school. Tod used tae think they’d hae been as well leaving the bairns at the gate.

Cauld enough to take the balls of a brass monkey right enough. Cars and pavements covered in that freezing frost that falls slowly over everything. Not even the salt air from the Firth can dispel it.
But in the Kirkgate Lidl will already be open and folk will be filling their bags with croissants and the like.
Greggs door is well and truly open and welcoming and the waft of saugage-roll and mini doughtnuts fill the air.
Round the corner in Great Junction Street on the other hand the door to JP Associates remains firmly closed, and may not open till Tracey arrives at twelve thirty. But then the boys were warned not to over stay their welcome in the Starbank Inn last night. But once the Reverend Callum Mackie gets talking, there is no shutting him up.

So Uncle Peter wasn’t lying when he said he was moving to Edinburgh. Not sure how Bob feels about Rebecca’s beloved uncle being so close by? And Edinburgh’s New Town too – not that far from Tod’s abode either. Time our investigators were asking that age-old question. Friend or Foe?

You’re bound to have seen him. He sits at the bottom of the slope leading into Waverley Station. You know, the big guy with the beard. You can smell him before you see him.

Well I met a bloke in Leith yesterday, at the end of the Kirkgate, who said that homeless guy is actually an MI5 agent. I just laughed and walked away, leaving the man feeding the birds.

A Spook, never in a million years!

They say that ministers are unlucky to have aboard boats. That would seem to be the case where that Newhaven fisherman was concerned. Callum you certainly brought him some very bad luck.

Mr James certainly met his match in Rebecca, but are they really an item? And how did she convince him to make her a partner in JP Associates? Was it really all about the money? Imagine received pronunciation in the Kirkgate? It certainly didn’t go down to well with Tracey, so how did they become friends. Is it possible there is more to Rebecca Stark than meets the eye? After all, she knows her roses.

But you can’t take Granton out the man. That’s Harry Cowan for you. Old habits die hard, even when you’re the husband of Tracey Cowan and attempting to abide by the rule. It’s not so much he hasn’t turned over that new leaf, it’s more he buried his past under it, ready to ressurect it whenever Tod calls, or the urge takes him. It’s all ligit mind you, or that’s what he tells Tracey.

Francis of Assisi has nothing on Big Jake Robinson sitting, this freezing cold morning, on his bench at the end of the Kirkgate throwing seeds from his raincoat pocket to the scrawny pigeons.

They say his heart beats in time with Leith itself, that he knows the rhythm of the place. They even say it’s from one of those castaway seeds, the one that fell in that crack in the paving, that his next tale grows. I believe them.

What could Mark le Mot, PhD psychology student, waiter down in Leith and researcher to JP Associates mean by this fancy title to his unfinished dissertation? His tutor thinks it clever, but just doesn’t “get it”. Could it be to do with Mark’s Huguenot roots or is it something much more up to date, something far more sinister?