I see a pink door and I want it painted black - Susan Dalgety

Miranda Dickson's pink door in Edinburgh's Drummond Place has been repainted (Picture: Courtesy of Miranda Dickson/SWNS)

It’s a mark of the difference between Glasgow and Edinburgh that in the week Glasgow is rocked by the closure of its night bus service, the biggest controversy in the Capital is the colour of a woman’s front door.

I have written before about the saga of Miranda Dickson’s choice of paint. She likes pink but was forced to change the colour of the entrance to her New Town house last year after Edinburgh Council said it did not meet the standards of a World Heritage Site.

Ms Dickson, a patient woman by all accounts, duly painted her front door green and applied for the necessary planning permission – only for it to be denied. Green, it seems, is also too ‘out there’ for Edinburgh’s poshest neighbourhood.

This time, a no doubt desperate Ms Dickson chose an innocuous white, with the faintest hint of pink, only for a yet another complaint to be lodged with the city council. As a fan of premium paints (looking but not buying, as I can get very acceptable dupes from my local paint shop), I reckon she chose the posh paint Farrow & Ball in Tailor Tack, the “lightest and most delicate” of its pink range.

But even the palest of pinks is too outré for the city council: "We have received a complaint alleging that the door has been repainted pink. We're currently looking into this and so can't say more at this time,” said a spokesperson, I imagine in her best Jean Brodie voice.

Edinburgh’s built heritage – and the efforts made to maintain it – is one of the many reasons why it is such a stunning city and attracts so many visitors and their tourist pounds. But it should not be a museum where taste is dictated by anonymous trolls and jobsworth city planners.

After nearly two years at the hands of mind-numbing bureaucrats, Miranda Dickson deserves a break. She should be allowed to paint her front door in any colour she likes, and to change it as often as she sees fit. If I were her, I would paint my front door in the colours of the rainbow Pride flag, and watch while the city council grappled with the moral dilemma my choice threw up.