Serenity Cafe Waverley Fundraising Cycle: Serenity Cafe members will take part in an all-day static cycle marathon at the station to ‘go the distance for poverty’. They will cycle in 20 minute slots all day from 7am to 7pm. Come along, support the cyclists and donate to help fund the work of this very worthwhile cause. 7am-7pm, Waverley Station, EH1 1BB. Serenity Cafe (8 Jackson’s Entry, The Tun, Holyrood Road) is Scotland’s first recovery cafe, run by people in recovery for people in recovery, and public customers who want good quality, good value food in a relaxed space. It also offers a wide range of activities for members. All events are drink and drugs free.
Join A Choir – Cadenza Open Rehearsal. Cadenza, ‘one of Scotland’s finest and most exciting amateur choirs’, is recruiting singers for all voices. Directed by Jenny Sumerling, the choir performs regularly throughout Scotland and beyond, with a wide-ranging repertoire including folk, jazz and popular songs as well as Renaissance church music, major choral works and contemporary classics. Rehearsals are in Edinburgh on Wednesday evenings – come along tonight and give it a go! This is your chance to join in singing a representative selection of the choir’s repertoire and see what they’re like – with no obligation. 7.30-9.45pm, Broughton St Mary’s Church, Bellevue Crescent. A very warm welcome guaranteed; for more information please call 0131 662 8721 or visit the Cadenza website here.
Citizen Space: Edinburgh’s Parking Action Plan. A drop-in session, with council officials available to discuss proposals contained in the Draft Parking Action Plan approved by the Transport and Environment Committee on 25th August 2015. The main actions include the extension of parking controls to cover weekends/Sundays and into the evening, the roll-out of shared use parking spaces and the introduction of visitor permits in the city centre. If you have any questions about the proposed changes then come along. 10am-1pm, Morningside Library, 184 Morningside Road.
Lunchtime Concert: The Melbourne Scottish Fiddle Club, Melbourne, Australia. 12.15pm, St Giles’ Cathedral, High Street. Free.
Health All Round Project 5G: Lisa Martin. Join the retro singer for an afternoon of old time favourites – a sentimental journey back to the 1940s and 50s with The Andrews Sisters, Gracie Fields, Vera Lynn, Nat King Cole and Frank Sinatra. Sing along to Doris Day and Connie Francis; rock and roll with Elvis and Brenda Lee. Refreshments too! 1-4pm, Prison Officers Club, 22b MacLeod St, Gorgie (wheelchair accessible). All welcome – free tickets are available from Tynecastle High School Community Wing, McLeod Street or Catriona Windle at Health All Round (0131 337 1376/catriona@healthallround.org.uk).
Kirkliston Community Centre Youth Club: with tuck shop, pool table, ping pong, karaoke, loud music and much more! It’s a social space for everyone in S1-S4 to grow and learn, make new friends and join in with old ones. 7pm, Kirkliston Community Centre, Queensferry Road. For more information please contact the centre on 0131 333 4214.
Edinburgh Active Citizenship Group: Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) – Whit’s That Aw Aboot? A free public seminar with Gill Davies of Global Justice Now. 7-9pm, Edinburgh City Chambers, 253 High Street. All welcome, no booking required. For further information please call 0131 558 3545 or email ActiveCitizenshipGroup@gmail.com.
A Clearer Light: Lord Hailes and the Scottish Enlightenment. Mark McLean, Learning Officer for the National Trust for Scotland at Newhailes, discusses Sir David Dalrymple, Lord Hailes. Hailes was very much a man of his time – but ‘his time’ was no ordinary time; he was born to an important Scottish family during a period when Scotland was just emerging as one of the most influential nations in Europe, and he became influential not through great political power or enormous wealth, but rather through the power of ideas. 
Mark McLean researched and co-curated the exhibition A Clearer Light: Lord Hailes and the Scottish Enlightenment which opened at Newhailes in 2013. 10.30am, Lauriston Castle, 2a Cramond Road South. Tickets cost £8 and must be booked in advance via the Usher Hall Box Office, Lothian Road, in person, by calling 0131 228 1155 or online here.
Edinburgh University Jazz Orchestra: an open rehearsal by this excellent 17-piece student big band. 3-5pm, The Jazz Bar, 1a Chambers Street. Free. Please note this venue is strictly cash only.
Mary’s Meals Charity Auction and Raffle: 6-8pm, Virgin Money Lounge, 28 St Andrew’s Square. For more information and tickets, please contact Rosalind Mackay on 0131 669 0003 or rcm2524@yahoo.co.uk. To find out more about Mary’s Meals, read The Edinburgh Reporter’s article about founder Magnus MacFarlane-Barrows’ Edinburgh International Book Festival appearance here.
Portobello Book Festival 2015: Chiang Yee – The Silent Traveller in Edinburgh. An illustrated talk by Jim Gilchrist about the remarkable Chinese travel writer Chiang Yee. In Yee’s beautiful book about Edinburgh he describes coming to Portobello in 1943, and how his walk along the Promenade reminds him of his time on Hainan Island, off the Chinese mainland. 8-10pm, Dalriada, 77 Promenade, Portobello. Free but tickets are required and may be collected from Portobello Library, 14 Rosefield Avenue. Some tickets may be available at the venue 15 minutes before the start of the event.
OpenStreetMap Foundation UK International Development Fair: a free public event concerning all aspects of international development. Thirty five stalls will showcase the work of members of NIDOS (Network of International Development Organisations in Scotland), DFID (The Department for International Development) and other international development groups and aid agencies. The Fair has been inspired by OpenStreetMap Foundation UK’s partners within Missing Maps, an initiative formed by the American and British Red Cross organisations, Medicins Sans Frontieres and the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap team to map the most vulnerable places in the developing world so that international and local NGOs and individuals can use the maps and data to better respond to crises affecting the areas. 10am-4pm, Greyfriars Kirk, Greyfriars Place. Free. This event is part of State of the Map Scotland 2015, a five day conference centred around the ‘Wikipedia of Maps’. OpenStreetMap is an initiative to create and provide free geographic data, such as street maps, to anyone.
Interactive Jazz Masterclass with the Mike Janisch Group: come and see first hand how these master musicians put together their complex compositions, and learn how they approach ‘conventional’ modern jazz playing, improvising over chord changes and handling harmonic and rhythmic variety. 6.30-8pm, The Jazz Bar, 1a Chambers Street. £5. Please note this venue is strictly cash only.
Mike Janisch Paradigm Shift Sextet: fronted by ex-US, London-based, internationally recognised bassist Michael Janisch, the band has French pianist Cédric Henriot (also using synthesizer), sax player Paul Booth – also on flute and occasionally a lugubrious didgeridoo, London sax star Jason Yarde, and Alex Bonney, alternating between trumpet and laptop, which has a live feed from all of the acoustic instruments and the means to distort them, echo them, and to make purely electronic sounds too! All driven by ex-Edinburgh, now London-based, drummer Andrew Bain. ‘I can’t imagine a band which could give a composer more variety of timbre, pulse, pace and style … With expressive shifts of pace and of pulse, the mood transitions can be dramatic or organic, a series of surprises and sudden re-routings.’ (London Jazz News). 9pm (entry from 8pm), The Jazz Bar, 1a Chambers Street. £8/£6. Please note this venue is strictly cash only.
