´óÏó´«Ã½

Some works of art are capable of stopping traffic in its tracks.

And in the case of the Big Man, it happens literally minutes after I arrive at a huge warehouse on an industrial estate in Leith.

The team behind the 25ft puppet - local companies Puppet Animation and the Puppet Lab - are testing its abilities in the strong wind and the sight of the blue giant striding across the forecourt is too much for one van driver, who promptly drives into a ditch.

"It happens all the time," says artistic director Simon McIntyre.

"If they're not driving off the road, they're driving past for another look, hooting their horns and hanging out the windows to take photographs."

A photocall on nearby Portobello Beach is just as much of a draw, the 12 puppeteers and handful of photographers soon overwhelmed by more than 100 children.

At least it's proof the team have managed to create a friendly giant - and that, says designer Kim Bersagal, is why he's blue.

"He's clearly not a human," she says,"so flesh tones were out and so many other colours came with associations.

"Red would have been too angry, green and orange too many other associations, blue just seemed right and appropriate too since he looks like he's just fallen out of the sky."

The one and a half tonne creation is the centrepiece of a £600,000 Arts Council funded project which will see the Big Man Walking into communities around the country, from the Isle of Bute this weekend, to Kirkcaldy, Invergordon, Buckie and Inverclyde.

"The idea is that the giant has been asleep for thousands of years," says Simon, "and now that he's awoken he's being invited into these communities where they will welcome him and show him the best things about their town.

"That's quite important in many towns, where they're not often asked about the good things and we've had some great responses.

"The thing about the Big Man is that he simply walks and looks and watches and then leaves again. He doesn't make any comment on what he sees."

If you look closely at the Big Man's eyes, you'll also see he is taking in more than your average puppet, with a remote-controlled camera recording what happens in each community.

The results will be streamed on the web.

But the question remains, what will happen to the Big Man after his latest expedition is over?

"Who knows," says Simon, "we're just a small puppet company who've got to make this amazing project.

"Maybe we'll be back to what we did. Or maybe he'll find more places to travel - with friends.

"I've always wanted to create a giant baby, that wandered around the country.

"Maybe that's what we'll do next."

Good luck to all the performers involved in a very special charity concert this weekend.

Artists on the Tall Ship (otherwise known as the Glenlee on the Clydeside) features singers and musicians from Scottish Opera, dancers from Scottish Ballet and several local artists and photographers.

All were inspired by the story of Colonel Mark Wright, an Edinburgh-born soldier who was killed in Afghanistan three years ago this month.

His parents, Bob and Jem Wright want to honour his memory by establishing a drop-in centre for other bereaved families and also for the soldiers who do return home, but are traumatised by their experiences.

It's thought the centre, which is due to open in Edinburgh in November, would be the first of its kind in Scotland.

As well as the £4 million they need to establish the centre, they estimate they need £60,000 a year for running costs.

So far, they've managed to raise half of that figure.

The evening will be hosted by Colonel Stuart Tootal, author of the book Danger Close, which deals with his own experiences with the first unit into Helmand back in 2006.

Marion Hebblethwaite, whose book One Step Further highlights those who've won the George Cross over the years, will also speak.

One of the most recent recipients was Mark Wright.

Details of the event can be found at www.operafor.com

Lovely to see Scottish Ballet in their new purpose-built home in the south side of Glasgow.

The new building, seamlessly latched onto Tramway - at least inside the building, it's virtually impossible to tell where one starts and the other ends - is astonishingly, the first purpose-built headquarters in the company's 40 year history.

And a far cry from their old premises at 261 West Princes Street in Glasgow's west end.

There the dancing was restricted not just by the size of some of the studios but by the buckets and mats that had to be scattered around the catch the drips from the leaking roofs.

The wardrobe department fought a constant battle to protect the costumes from damp - famously losing all of their Conran designed "swans" from Swan Lake when the basement flooded.

The van drivers meanwhile had to master the tightest three point turns in history in order to back into a scenedock, never intended to be part of a Victorian tenement block.

And while some aspects were quaint and quirky - not least the mail bag on a rope which stopped admin staff on the top floor having to come up and down the stairs 40 times a day - the overall message seemed to be that this was a national company not worthy of proper investment.

It's only a decade since dancers had to take a campaign to Downing Street to try to persuade the government to prevent the company from closing altogether and while artistically, Scottish Ballet is back on its feet again - largely thanks to the arrival of Ashley Page - as the smallest and leanest of the national companies, it had some political ground to gain.

This should do it. A state of the art facility in an existing arts centre in a thriving community which has already taken the company to its heart.

The final million of the £11m bill for the building was raised through public appeal and they'll get the chance to see what their money paid for when the company throws its doors open on Saturday and Sunday as part of the Doors Open campaign.

It's been a sad week with the loss of three cultural innovators in as many days.

First, snake-hipped dance god Patrick Swayze, then the man who invented the whole TV chef trend, Keith Floyd, and now the screen writer Troy Kennedy Martin.

The Glasgow-born writer created some of the most classic work on British television over the last few decades - everything from Z Cars to Edge of Darkness.

He was also known for his writing in cinema - in particular, his screenplay for the Italian Job.

And more recently Red Heat, which he co-wrote for Arnold Schwarzengger.

Z-Cars, which he wrote before he was even 30, revolutionised television in the 1960s with a gritty realism which hadn't been attempted before.

He claimed to have the idea of a police series set in patrol cars in the north of England while ill with mumps and listening to real police patrols on VHF radio.

Although he was one of a team of writers on the show, it was he who was credited with its creation, he held the copyright and he got paid a fee for every episode.

He also brought the series to an end in 1978, writing the final episode in which some of the best known characters returned.

In 1985, he wrote Edge of Darkness, a chilling thriller about a nuclear conspiracy in which Bob Peck played a policeman investigating his daughter's murder.

Again, he broke new ground by demanding to be able to write up to the wire, allowing him to include contemporary references and avoid any interference from his paymasters.

It's a way of writing current screenwriters can only dream of and for Kennedy Martin, it was also a short-lived period of freedom.

I spoke to him a few times on the phone, usually about an obituary for one of his many screenwriting friends and colleagues.

Among them John McGrath, who worked with him in the ´óÏó´«Ã½ script editors department in the 1960s.

He was always charming and helpful, with an encylopaedic knowledge of British television.

And a writer of his calibre - and a Scot to boot - would have been equally dismayed at the demise of another great Scottish literary institution.

Chambers, who've been publishing their dictionaries in Edinburgh since 1819, will now close their offices in the capital with the loss of 27 jobs.

The dictionary - famous among Scrabble players for including a wider spread of eclectic words than some other dictionaries, will still be published but only in London.

The use of online spell checks has been blamed for the downturn in business.

While the telephone directories and piles of back issues of newspapers may no longer clutter your average newsroom, I'm one of a handful of Luddites who still likes to keep a dictionary, a thesaurus and a few good grammar books to hand.

Too bad there are fewer and fewer of us around.

There's something about the arrival of the Edinburgh Fringe each summer that's so big, so sudden and so surreal that it seems as if it's all just a dream.

Like a big, noisy howling teenager rushing up to the demure old lady that Edinburgh normally is, whirling her around so her skirts fly in the air and her underwear is exposed to the world. (although if you're going to be pedantic, the Fringe at 62, should really know better).

Every available space is taken over for performance - from pubs and shops to church halls and public toilets.

What's left is plastered in posters, advertising shows from first thing in the morning, to the wee small hours of the next.

And they're so keen - they even started a full three days earlier than usual - to maximise the box office and because thousands of performers were already in town.

Among them Denise Van Outen, Lionel Blair, Alastair McGowan, and Paul Merton.

The celebrity revolving door was demonstrated beautifully on the Pleasance one afternoon as Hardeep Singh Kholi stepped out of one side of a taxi and Nicholas Parsons stepped in through the other.

And amidst the established names, the thousands of unknowns hoping to become known.

Among them two "Russian" performers so desperate for publicity they delivered themselves in a box to the ´óÏó´«Ã½ reception, and promptly perform there and then for the startled reporter.

Do we remember the name of their show - one of 2,098 at this year's Fringe?

Perhaps not, but it did up the ante for those who think a flyer is enough to justify a review.

From performances in a box to one so big, it had to be staged miles out of the city centre at Ingliston.

This Romanian version of Faust - part of the International festival - definitely upped the ante with a cast of 120 and a stage set which split down the middle, allowing the audience to descend into hell.

A spectacular performance - although perhaps lost a little of its edge by herding the audience out of hell and back into their seats - where the only hellish experience was having to queue while people in very British fashion insisted on returning to the exact same seats they'd left in the first place.

Not that there was much sitting around this festival.

Thanks to the ubiquitous city tramworks, we were all walking more.

Maps were issued to help festival goers negotiate the old town/new town divide; extra crossings were introduced in Princes Street. and more pedestrians meant more business, particularly for those with venues scattered across the city.

They were making do down at the Book festival too where a dodgy generator plunged several events into darkness.

Ian Rankin - no stranger to the darker side of Edinburgh in his crime novels - cheerily grabbed a torch and carried on with the business of handing out the UK's oldest literary prize to Irish author Sebastian Barry.

The Usher Hall suffered a similar power cut on its opening weekend of the International festival - leading to many jokes about the aptness of this year's theme of Enlightenment.

Australian director Jonathan Mills in provocative mood opened this year's programme with Judas Maccabeus, Handel's thinly disguised tribute to the Duke of Cumberland's quelling of the Jacobite rebellion.

If there was any bad feeling, it didn't show on opening night, when a capacity audience took their seats for the performance - including a rousing rendition of See the Conquering Hero Comes.

It wasn't just the adults who got their fill of culture.

For children, there was a stronger programme than ever.

There were celebrities here too - like Andy from CBeebies who as every child under five will tell you, doesn't require a second name because he's so famous.

And for the mums and dads, there was a children's presenter of an earlier era - Peter Duncan - who in classic children's TV style, set about turning a corner of the Pleasance into a Blue Peter garden using just stones, water and vast amounts of sticky backed plastic.

There was conventional puppetry - like the wonderful staging of Rapunzel at the Scottish Storytelling Centre - but surreal performances too - like a Korean show entirely about dog poo.

The moral of the Dandelion Story seems to be that every substance has a purpose.

My son, who's sitting in the front row eating his ham sandwiches between guffaws seems to get the message - although it's clear that dancing dog poo is still an acquired taste for anyone over the age of five.

There are plenty of ups and downs in the world of comedy.

For Eddie Izzard, quite literally as he continues his series of marathons around the UK with a sprint up Arthur's Seat.

A veteran of more than 12 festivals, he admits he'd rather endure the physical toil of a thousand miles of running, than the mental anguish of a bad review at the festival.

No bad reviews for up and coming comic Tom Wrigglesworth, who not only got a show from a bad experience but by touring it, has managed to change the law.

The comedian was arrested on a Virgin train last year after having a whip-round for an old lady who'd been charged £115 for having the wrong ticket.

His tale of an entire train full of passengers standing up Spartacus-style to stop him being arrested was both comic and heart-warming and has genuinely brought about a change in ticket policy.

Something few comedy shows must be able to claim.

Equally uplifting is the Soweto Gospel choir - who admitted that this is likely to be their last Fringe run due to international touring commitments.

Not bad for a group who got their first big break in Edinburgh in 2003 playing the classic venue of a church hall - and are now barely able to contain an audience in one of the festival's biggest venues.

Truly the dream of most performers at the fringe.

And after three and a half weeks, that dream is over.

The temporary venues are dismantled, returning to more mundane business.

The posters are peeled off, the streets cleared of performers.

And the good news is that neither the recession nor problems with last year's box office have knocked the Fringe off its stride.

Sales are up by 21% - back to the steady climb of the last decade.

Just the International festival remains - and that draws to a close on Sunday night with the customary oohs and ahhs of the fireworks concert.

After that there'll be no symphonies performed on workmen's tools, or bar-room brawls staged in real bar-rooms.

Or full scale giraffes striding down the Royal Mile.

Or crockery rattling nightly as tornados swoop over the Royal Mile to the tattoo.

After that, it's all over. At least until next year.

No surprises that the Fringe has recovered from last year's Box Office related drop.

With most of the larger venues reporting anything up to 50% increases in numbers over the opening weeks, it was always going to be a good year.

But even the most optimistic promoters must be surprised by the fact that the overall sales are up across the board by 21%.

And taking into account last year's problems, that means the - 2007.

The main reason, seems to be the high percentage of UK visitors - staycationers spending their holidays not abroad but at the festival.

But a strong programme of shows and competitive ticketing deals seems to have paid off.

Karen Koren of the Gilded Balloon is particularly delighted to win back a local audience.

Her plans to stage the Chippendales at one of her biggest venues was met by tut tuts at the start of the festival, from people who felt that staging an already successful commercial show was not only a cop out but also out of keeping with the spirit of the Fringe.

Her argument was always that she wanted to win back a local audience who decided the fringe wasn't for them - and it seems to have paid off.

Not that the Fringe can afford to be complacent.

There are still plenty of issues to resolve, not least the role of the slightly antiquated Fringe Society in the promotion of the world's largest arts festival.

Food for thought as the venues are dismantled and the thousands of flyposters are washed off today.