This is public enemy number one in Leith Walk at the moment, a piledriver beating remorselessly from 8 to 6 six days a week.  Despite its being on the other side of the road with houses and carparks between us and my windows and doors being shut tight its thump is an ever present accompaniment to my saxophone practice. 

We're never short of roadworks and building sites have proliferated in the last couple of years.  The student housing complexes at Shrubhill, by the library and in the former Gateway Theatre seem all to be up and running.  Starbucks and Sainsbury have established themselves in one.  Costa and Morrisons are said to be coming to another.  Local independent traders are not delighted.

We sorely miss that tram with all those young people clogging up the bus-stops in the morning.  Not that I'm often out early enough to be personally inconvenienced.

The piledriver is working on a non-student housing development at Shrubhill and Cala's flats on the old sorting office site look to be more than halfway done.  People are living in them and now that Brunswick Road is open again, the gas main project that closed it having romped to completion in twelve weeks against the forecast of six, the residents won't have to go all around the houses to get home.

Despite having given the road a good going over in preparation for not laying tram lines and thus causing a fair degree of nuisance for a fair stretch of time reasons are constantly being found to tear it up again.  The very useful bus-stops at the top of the Walk have just gone out of commission thanks to the St James Centre redevelopment.  I do hope they are not out of service till that work finishes in 2020 (or 2025 if their forecast is as poor as the gas men's).