On a tour of what will become Edinburgh’s new National Centre for Music, the line from the old Doors’ classic The End sprung to mind … weird scenes inside the gold mine.

Having seen the place in action as a debating chamber in the run up to the 1997 devolution referendum, and again over 10 years ago when I looked round the Old Royal High School with the developers hoping to turn it into Edinburgh’s first six-star hotel, it’s certainly weird seeing the inside of the Georgian landmark looking like a rescue mission after a drone strike.

This time I was with the Royal High School Preservation Trust’s chief executive Kate Smith, who is overseeing the project, and Jenny Jamison, the National Centre for Music’s (NCM) chief executive who will be responsible for the artistic programme, was with us as we picked our way through the detritus and piles of materials, squeezing past the workers in hard hats, high-vis jackets and ear defenders in the narrow confines of the old school corridors.

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Where once schoolboys parsed sentences (I don’t think they do that anymore) and four big beast political leaders, now all dead, thrashed out the advantages or otherwise of a Scottish Parliament in what was planned to be the crucible of home rule in 1979, construction crews are burrowing away at the foundations of what is hoped will........

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