Monday in Edinburgh – What’s On Today

Cameo Toddler Time: short screenings for pre-school children, their parents and carers. Today: Boj (U) – CBeebies favourite Aussie bilby (rabbit-bandicoot) pops up to make things better for his buddies with all his funny surprises and creative thinking. 11am, Cameo, Home Street. Tickets cost £3 per child (accompanying adults free) and may be purchased from the Box Office in person, by calling 0871 902 5723 or online here.

Meet the Edible Gardening Team: take a look around the productive garden with the Edible Gardening Project volunteers. Find out what jobs need doing in your own garden now and have your vegetable growing questions answered. 1-3pm, Demonstration Garden, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, Inverleith Row. Free, no booking required; also at same times on Tuesday 15th September.

The Emergence of Judy Taylor: Angela Jackson discusses her debut novel, which was awarded Edinburgh International Book Festival’s First Book Award in 2013, and was selected as an Edinburgh Waterstones Scottish Book of the Year. Angela was also recently named one of Amazon’s Rising Stars. 6.30-7.30pm, Stockbridge Library, Hamilton Place. Please book your free place by calling the library on 0131 529 5665 or emailing stockbridge.library@edinburgh.gov.uk. This event is part of Stockfest 2015.

LGBT Spiritual Space. Maxwell Reay, NHS Mental Health Community Chaplain, offers a supportive space for people to discuss and develop ideas of spirituality and identity. Suitable for people of all faiths or no faith at all. Today: opportunities for individual conversations and information regarding spiritual needs. 6.30-7.30pm (within weekly Drop-In, which runs 5.30-8pm), LGBT Health & Wellbeing, 9 Howe Street. For more information please contact Alison Wren on 0131 652 3283 or email alison@lgbthealth.org.

Dramarama: fun drama games, the basics of acting including mime and improvisation work with scripts, and a final performance at the end of term. If you are interested in acting, theatre or drama, want to build up your confidence, meet new friends or just try something new, come along to Dramarama! For ages 12-16. 5.30-6.30pm tonight and every Monday in the autumn term, Corstorphine Library, 12 Kirk Loan. For more information and to book your free place, please ask in the library or call 0131 529 5506.

Grassmarket Community Cinema: Last Orders (15). Jack Dodd was a London butcher who enjoyed a pint with his mates for over 50 years. When he died, he died as he lived, with a smile on his face watching a horse race on which he had bet – with borrowed money. But before he died he had a final request, ‘Last Orders’, that his ashes be scattered in the sea at Margate. The film follows his mates, Ray, Lenny and Vic and his son Vince as they journey to the sea with the ashes. Along the way, the threads of their lives, their loves and their disappointments are woven together in their memories of Jack and his wife. Based on Graham Swift’s Booker Prize-winning novel; directed by Fred Schepisi. Starring Michael Caine, Bob Hoskins, Helen Mirren, Ray Winstone & Tom Courtenay. ‘…one of the most rewarding and authentic depictions of or tributes to the Cockney way of life in recent years’ (Time Out). 7pm, Grassmarket Community Project, 86 Candlemaker Row. All welcome; free – donations to the Project also very welcome. The cafe will be open – please use it!

For Crying Out Loud: exclusive screenings for parents/carers (maximum of two adults per baby) and their babies under 12 months old. Baby changing, bottle-warming and buggy parking facilities are available. Today’s film is Irrational Man (12A), Woody Allen’s 45th feature, set on Rhode Island, where a bored writer and professor (Joaquin Phoenix) finds himself drawn down an unexpected path, leading him towards philosophical crises, hidden dangers and late-night games of Russian roulette… 11am, Filmhouse, Lothian Road. Tickets cost £4.50/£3.50 (babies admitted free) and may be purchased from the Filmhouse box office in person, by calling 0131 228 2688 or online here.

Ray Scoble: Photographs – an exhibition of abstracted views taken in and around Edinburgh. By focusing on a small area, Ray’s subject matter becomes concealed and supplanted with alternative interpretations. 10am-3pm Monday to Thursday, 12 noon-3pm Fridays, 12.30-2.30pm Saturdays, St Bride’s Centre, Orwell Terrace, Dalry. Ends 9th October 2015.

Inspired by MC Escher: Relativity/Endless Stair/Scale Infinite. Professor Alex de Rijke, Co-Founding Director dRMM Architects (Royal College of Art) will speak about his Endless Stair project, which took inspiration from the structural, social and artistic possibilities of the staircase, the aspect of architecture most closely associated with sculpture and a place where people inevitably cross paths. Devised with M.C. Escher’s popular drawings in mind, Endless Stair is not a stair without end, but a stair designed to be endlessly reconfigured: an entirely prefabricated construction, each piece an essential part of the additive structure, where loads are transferred through demountable flights that can be recycled on another site in a different configuration. Endless Stair was reconfigured in 2014 for the FuoriSalone exhibition in Milan, where it provided dramatic contrast to the Ca’ Granda Renaissance building. Prof de Rijke will discuss its conception, journey and possibilities. 12.45-1.30pm, Hawthornden Theatre, Scottish National Gallery, The Mound. Free and unticketed.

David Bailey and the Spirit of the Sixties. Nobody better embodied the spirit of the sixties than David Bailey. In an amusing and enlightening talk, Dominic Sandbrook, historian, broadcaster and columnist, takes a closer look not just at Bailey’s meteoric rise to fame, but at the often surprising realities of sixties Britain. Where did the idea of Swinging London come from? How did an East London tailor’s son rise to become its leading visual chronicler? And what was life really like behind the myths of the Swinging Sixties? 6-7.30pm, Hawthornden Theatre, Scottish National Gallery, The Mound. Tickets cost £5/£4 and may be purchased in person from the Information Desk in the Gardens Entrance of the Scottish National Gallery, or by calling 0131 624 6560 9.30am-4.30pm with credit/debit card. Bailey’s Stardust continues at the Scottish National Gallery until 18th October 2015.

These Dangerous Women: a screening of this film, made by the Women’s International League of Peace and Freedom and the Clapham Film Unit, which tells the stories of the British women who attempted to get to The Hague during World War I to attend a conference, the aim of which was to bring a negotiated settlement to the conflict. A few short video clips  from last years Wool Against Weapons campaign to create a 7-mile pink peace scarf as a protest against the renewal of Trident nuclear weapons will also be shown . 7-9pm, Out of the Blue Drill Hall, 36 Dalmeny Street. Free: donations welcome.

Sheila Dalgleish: North. An exhibition of textile art by Edinburgh-based Sheila Dalgleish. ‘Where is north?  This may sound like an easy question, but of course, north is anywhere north of where the person asking is standing.  So, if you are standing at the South Pole, then the whole world is north of you….’ Sheila has travelled in Norway, Iceland and Alaska; her first solo exhibition is a celebration of ‘North’. 10am-4pm daily, Gayfield Creative Spaces, 11 Gayfield Square. Free. Ends 19th September 2015.

Sofi’s Cult Movies: popular classics on the silver screen in the cosy, darkened back room. Free popcorn! Tonight’s film is Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited (15). Estranged brothers Francis (Owen Wilson), Peter (Adrien Brody) and Jack (Jason Schwartzman) reunite for a train trip across India. 8pm, Sofi’s, 65 Henderson Street. Free.

Golden Hare Books Presents Helen McClory: On the Edges of Vision. The author launches her debut collection of short stories, ‘Dark, unflinching and utterly glorious. Every page is a surreal world compressed, every sentence breathless and bruising’ (Kirsty Logan). 7-9pm, Golden Hare Books, St Stephen Street, Stockbridge. Free tickets may be obtained via eventbrite here. This event is part of Stockfest 2015.

Cameo Culture Shock: ‘the best in cult and genre films’. Tonight’s film is The Evil Dead (18): five friends travel to a cabin in the woods, where they unknowingly release flesh-possessing demons. ‘Much imitated, but never bettered, The Evil Dead was the birth of an independently-spirited, viscerally-minded new wave in low budget horror cinema’. 9pm, Cameo, Home Street. Tickets may be purchased from the Box Office in person, by calling 0871 902 5723 or online here; prices vary.

Old Chain Pier Folk Music Jam Session: feel free to bring your instrument and join in the jam! 7.30pm, Old Chain Pier, Trinity Crescent.