Quintin Jardine's blog

Managed to move the car this afternoon; neither of us enjoyed it. But still, it’s progress.

Weirdest thing. It;’s minus something outside just now, and I’m in my office: ten minutes ago I heard a buzz, turned around and there was a wasp crawling up one of my blinds. Dunno what the hell it thought it was at. Sadly I can no longer ask it. I have a large halogen uplighter, and the silly bugger flew into it. Ever wonder what cremating wasp smells like? Answer: Bad.

That is a very kind and thoughtful question, Mary. The answer is that we are quite happy with the principle which Amazon applies to its Kindle sales, and with the terms.

And hello to you too. Sorry again to have been quiet, but the bunker mentality took me over. Yes indeed, there has been lots to chew over in the media, but most of it has involved the failed English bid for the 2018 World Cup. As you’ll appreciate this has nothing to do with me as a Scot, so I refrained from comment. If I hadn’t, I’d have been reflecting on the quality of the advice given to the Prime Minister and future king that led them to throw their full personal authority into a process that anyone with half a brain must have known would be decided by a group of people, some of whose members make the likes of Bernard Madoff and Alan Stanford seem by comparison to be pillars of financial probity. If I hadn’t refrained, I’d have been criticising the BBC for only giving Andrew Jennings half an hour to air his FIFA story, when he has enough material for a six part series, and for timing it so that it could do no good, only harm. (Okay, the BBC is run by idiots of the same magnitude as those who advised Dave and Wills, so that’s no shocker.)  I’d have been wondering how many of the bid team have ever read his book, ‘Foul!’, which sets it all out, and over which nobody has sued, and how anyone, having studied it, could have marched straight into ritual humiliation with their eyes wide shut. When I’d done all that reflecting, I’d have come to the conclusion that the slippery Swiss Blatter and his disgraceful cohorts have somehow managed to steal the game of football from the people, to whom it belongs, and must be made to give it back. But of course, Gillian, that’s just between you and me. (As is my opinion that if Russia has a perfectly good case, and that if the thing was for sale to the highest bidder, they were always going to win that one.)

Good question, but in fact the boy Oz did not meet his end in any book. He perished, in slightly mysterious circumstances, somewhere between the end of the prophetically titled For the Death of Me, and the beginning of Inhuman Remains, in which his erstwhile partner/nemesis Primavera strikes out on her own.

I’ve been absent without leave for a while.  Blame it on the snow; I’ve been pretty much village-bound for the last ten days, and I’m beginning to take it personally. I’ve lived in Gullane for six months short of forty years, and I’ve never known a stretch of weather like this. Yet it isn’t the worst I’ve experienced, not even this year; it was worse in March in Spain, the day that a metre of snow fell in four hours, taking out the power supply in the process.

Still, it’s bad enough. It’s around freezing point outside, for all that the sun is shining through the icicles. I’ve just seen the faintest ripple of movement in a branch. Could that be the first sign of a breeze that will bring the promised thaw? Maybe, let’s hope so; but even if it is, things aren’t going to get back to normal in a hurry. The conditions have been so widespread that the local highways department has been able to do no more than clear the main roads. The pavements are lethal, but you’d better not fall over and break anything, for you’ll have to wait a while for an ambulance. It’s easy to feel neglected. I’ve succumbed myself once or twice. But reasonable consideration makes me acknowledge that councils can only make reasonable provision for potential adverse weather and that every so often, be it once in a lifetime, things are going to happen that will overwhelm us for a while. Shit happens.

However bad things get though, they won’t stop politicians behaving like politicians. I read today that opposition members in  the Scottish Parliament are attacking the Transport Minister’s response to the roads situation. What do they expect the guy to do? Overfly the M8 breathing  fire on the ice? Do a Boromir and clear snowdrifts with his arms? Do these clowns believe that Santa really does visit every child in the land in the early hours of December 25? (Not that I’m saying he doesn’t, kids.) Or is it simply that they are so venal and opportunistic that they will use what has been, let’s face it, a public disaster, to serve their own narrow, selfish interests?