MEANING IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER

Submitted by Editor on Sat, 05/07/2014 - 11:09

Pictured here is the cipher panel on the wall of No. 29 Spey Terrace.

All sources agree that it comprises the monogram of the Edinburgh Artisan Building Company, which built the tenement here in 1867 in common cause (to provide better working-class housing) with the Pilrig Model Buildings completed over the road a few years earlier.

We can make out the E which is wrapped in a kind of conceptual clinch with the B. The A stands out like a sore thumb, and there’s no difficulty in spotting the C with a smaller O neatly chain-linked through it.

But – in a world exclusive – Spurtle can reveal that there is also an R present which no-one we know of has noticed before. It is mostly concealed, but its leg clearly curves down to the right from the bar of the E/B.

We spent much of this morning rearranging the letters EBRACo in search of a meaning, but found none. However, if there is another concealed letter in this cipher – an I lurking in the stem of the E/B – then one immediately finds the ambivalent presence of AEROBIC (requiring air) and EBORACI (belonging to York). We welcome your conspiracy theories.

Meanwhile, in an unrelated development on nearby Shaw's Street, Spurtle yesterday stumbled across this Volkswagen dormobile which appears to have gone nowhere fast for some considerable time. Notice the weeds growing under and around it, and the moss growing over it. So far as we can tell, it is perfectly legally parked, even if its main use now seems to be as a shed.

There’s something strikingly pathetic about the van’s expression, something forlorn in the eyes, like a neglected dog’s in an advert for the SSPCA.

We think it originated in Salford in about 1971. Will no-one chuck it a biscuit?