MONDAY

BOFFINS somewhere have unboiled an egg. Whatever next? Unscrambled eggs? Unpoached poached eggs? The possibilities are eggless! As every masterchef knows, to make an omelette it is necessary to break a few eggs. But maybe in future that won't be the case. Maybe scientists will find a way to make an omelette from intact eggs though ideally not with bits of shell in the mix. While on the subject, a website asks: "Why was James Bond so keen on eggs?" to which there is the following reply: "Ian Fleming famously got Bond's name from the author of a book about birds. I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this. Other than birds lay eggs."

TUESDAY

IT is with reluctant relish that I return to the subject of sausage rolls and the cost thereof. It may be over-reacting to describe being charged £3.50 for a sausage roll as traumatic but many nights of late have been spent tossing and turning and wondering how one justifies such a charge. Needless to say, sympathetic readers have sought to gazump me. One, for instance, says he was gobsmacked when he read my woeful tale and suggested that I ought to have known better than to shop in North Berwick. He recommended the community baker in nearby Dunbar with which, thanks to the good offices of the Home Secretary, I am already acquainted. Another recalls the occasion when he was golfing at Turnberry and stopped mid-round for a snack. A half-warm sausage roll and a can of industrial lager cost him a whopping £9. En passant, I note that the sausage roll's fascinating history has yet to be written. Anent - use it or lose it! - Macduff, is this a gap in the market I see before me?

WEDNESDAY

IN order to "transform the visitor experience", the National Galleries of Scotia want to swallow a swathe of Princes Street Gardens to allow it to show work by the likes of my dear deid friends Sir Henry Raeburn and Sir Eduardo Paolozzi. As readers of this effortlessly throbbing organ are well aware, I am something of a culture vulture. However, there are times when even I think that those charged with transforming visitors' experience need their bums caned. Of late Princes Street Gardens look more like a tip than an attraction. Indeed, each year they become less like a garden and more like a tawdry fairground. The NGS says that it needs to gobble up another five metres of this hallowed space and has already secured the compliance of the philistines on the council. Of course, as regular visitors to the gallery will be painfully aware, much of it is taken up with a restaurant, a cafe and a shop, any one or all of which could be sacrificed in the name of art. I fear, however, that yet again one will be micturating in the wind and that the once handsome city of Edinburgh is destined soon to go down the tubes. If, indeed, it has not already done so.

THURSDAY

MY dear amigo, Ian Rankin, has let it be known via Twitter that he is writing another Rebus novel, allowing some rags to announce: "Rebus is Back." I have news for them - he's never been away! I blame Dickens for this nonsense. Older readers may recall how for a few suspenseful weeks in the 1840s he swithered over the fate of Little Nell. Should he allow her to live or let her die? Such is the omnipotence of the author. In the end, Little Nell was shown a red card and Dickens was accused by all and sundry of her heinous murder. As anyone with half a brain knows, she was only ever alive in Dickens's imagination. The same goes for Rebus, who comes and goes as Mr Rankin pleases. One fondly recalls when various blatts recorded that the hard-drinking, Raith Rovers-supporting sleuth with a dubious taste in pop music was against the smoking ban. For all I know, he may also be against wind "farms", fracking, dog fouling and freckles.

FRIDAY

WHAT makes a bestseller? I ask because I'm thinking of writing one but only if I can be assured of success. The latest tome by my dear chum, Jeffrey Archer, informs me that he has sold over 270 million copies of his drivellings. Have you ever met anyone who would own up to buying them? But I digress. This year marks the 100th anniversary of The Thirty-Nine Steps, John Buchan's self-styled "shocker". Dreadfully written, ridiculously plotted and with characters more cardboard than plastic, it has been constantly in print for reasons that are hard to fathom. In his rather good book, Bestseller, Claud Cockburn examined 16 books that had sold like satsumas at Christmas. They included The Sheik by EM Hull, The Garden Of Allah by Robert Hichens and The Constant Nymph by Margaret Kennedy, none of which is on anyone's reading list these days. Conspicuous by its absence is The Thirty-Nine Steps, to which Mr Cockburn only refers in his introduction. As an 11-year-old, it seems, he thought it depicted "real" life. As to why it has endured, he is silent.

SATURDAY

COME friendly bombs and fall on ... Kirkcaldy! I refer to the frankly mind-blowing news that during the Cold War, the residents of the linoleum capital of the world would have been "left to die" had the Cold War "gone hot". Apparently, Kirkcaldy would have faced "near certain annihilation" had the Russians decided to drop a few bombs on the naval yard at nearby Rosyth because Harold Macmillan decided not to bother building shelters for the populace. Yet again, it seems, we are but cannon-fodder to the rest of this disunited tip. One wonders now how Helensburghians are feeling. With Faslane in their backyard, do they have shelters to which they may repair when the missiles begin to descend? I ask but do not expect an answer. As with Kirkcaldy, such information is doubtless classified and will only be released when we're past caring.

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Quote of the week: "F****** have it you flash Czech f***." Kim Sears gives her well-tempered reaction as her spouse-to-be, one A Murray, gives Thomas Berdych what for in the Australian Open semis.