If there’s one thing guaranteed to have any sane person running towards the open arms of Satan begging to be jabbed in the tender regions by his pitchfork-wielding minions, it’s the trendy vicar. There is nothing worse than the modern person of the cloth who holds that God still fails to receive sufficient whoops of approval for creating such marvels as the acoustic guitar, real ale and ethnic art. These clerics have a generalised affinity for the ancient sacred mysteries of the Gospels — they’d just prefer it if these mysteries weren’t quite so ancient or mysterious, hence their mania for getting tuned into, as they might say, “the contemporary scene”.

We don’t really do trendy vicars here: once they see the modern Scotland they’re expected to embrace, 1st-century Galilee under the Romans suddenly seems freshly appealing.

The trendy vicar is a creature of the prosperous, bosky south, where the natives are slower to anger when a pastor points out that the Bible was an early version of Britain’s Got Talent.

That said, we did have Richard Holloway, a former bishop of Edinburgh who was always coming up with headline-grabbing claims that the good book was no more reliable than a copy of Woman’s Realm. We learnt this week that Holloway is to play Saint Thomas Beckett in an Edinburgh Festival production, presumably because all roles in The Rocky Horror Show had already been filled.

In Holloway’s absence from the trendy pulpit, however, we this week welcomed the Rt Rev David Lunan, new moderator of the Church of Scotland, who has decreed that we can be kept abreast of all that’s new in the arena of 2,000-year-old scripture courtesy of the Mod Blog, a running account of his daily doings on the Church of Scotland’s website. I’m 22 years younger than the Rt Rev and even I’m not sure what a blog is. Nonetheless, he has favoured us with a few outtakes from week one:

Tuesday: “Hi! We’re approaching the midsummer equinox, so I was delighted to attend a workshop, Finding the Inner Sun Goddess, at the kind invitation of the Morningside Pagan Fellowship. They really have some refreshing ideas about divinity! And they’re not shy about ‘letting it all hang out’. What a fine example to other OAPs in our community!”

Thursday: “Duvet day! Back tomorrow!”

Friday: “The annual bring-and-buy sale approaches. Very busy, but, as pop sensations KC and the Sunshine Band once sang, that’s the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it. Euphemia is preparing a batch of her famous drop scones and Lena has made a stunning portrait of Kofi Annan in macramé. I’ll miss both ladies when they die.”

Saturday: “Came up with idea for a new device — the iPray. No idea yet what it would do . . .”

As someone once told me, the only good thing about the bagpipes is that they don’t smell. They’re the musical equivalent of particle physics: appreciated by those who have a training in the field, but a mystery to everyone else. And as with particle physics, the bagpipe practitioner is a lonely figure, obliged by the sheer volume of their instrument to master it at some considerable remove from the rest of humanity — the farther reaches of the Campsie hills and abandoned slate quarries.

Yet another blow for Bagpipe Lib was sustained this week with the news that Asbos could be served on busking pipers who play around the Royal Mile at times its residents decree to be inconvenient — pretty much midnight-to-midnight.

“Most of the complaints,” said the noise inspector Bruce Johnston, “have come from residents who work nightshifts, go to university and study at home, have small children or are very elderly” — conditions rarely enhanced by a chorus of The Skye Boat Song.

Still, you can see why the pipers disregard such sensibilities: a pitch on the Mile can earn a piper up to £80 a day. My suspicion is the cash comes from tourists who think some kind of reverse slot-machine principle applies, with the contribution of coins ensuring the pipers stop playing.

My rather erratic uncle, known as Nizzy, once noted, when I made him a present of a CD, that purchasing such items was foolish because, “you get them for nothing wi’ the papers”.

We live in strange times, ruled by what might be dubbed Nizzynomics. Musicians give away their music and make money from concerts; clothing is so cheap that it seems just as sensible to buy a new T-shirt as wash the old one. And as the Scottish government never ceases to point out — and as it set about rectifying this week — some supermarkets sell alcohol at a lower price per litre than bottled water.

Restaurants have long practised a similar kind of Nizzynomics: there’s little profit made on food and the dividend is all in the drinks. This is why waiting staff ask repeatedly if they can get you a coffee, even though you’re currently drinking one.

Nizzynomics arrived in grander fashion this week with the news of an Edinburgh eatery with a pay-what- you-want policy. At Reverie, you can eat your fill then reimburse Edwin van der Ven, its proprietor, to whatever extent you feel has been warranted. “It’s a win-win situation,” said van der Ven, a man with a charmingly singular understanding of the noun “win”. “It’s an excellent opportunity for us to walk before we start running.”

So far customers have been leaving sums approximate to what would be paid for similar food elsewhere, though one couple left only 50p — the kind of behaviour that leaves you hoping they were flogged beverages by the waiter so incessantly that they left the premises slightly mad, gibbering: “Just tap water, please.”

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