Quintin Jardine's blog

Kinky Friedman died yesterday. I knew him. I read his books and when he was signed up for the Edinburgh Book Festival I volunteered to chair him. 

It was an interesting gig. He brought his guitar, did an hour of songs and standup and only read from his current book because I persuaded him. Afterwards we went to eat. I blew most of my chair fee on the tab. He told me ‘It will be returned to you tenfold,’ which of course it never was.

Kinky was a great friend of Willie Nelson. During that dinner he talked about him, fondly. He told me that one of the things about Willie was that he never refused an autograph, to the extent that he would stand for an hour and more in the rain signing his name for fans.

A couple of years later I was looking for a title for a Skinner and recalled that story. I called Kinky and asked if he minded me using it. He said ‘Fine, go ahead.’ Thus, my novel, ‘Autographs in the Rain’, came to be called what it is. Around that time a couple of US kids appeared in the queue after one of my Festival gigs and asked me to sign a book for him. ‘The Kinkster reads you,’ they assured me.

I hadn’t thought about him in a while, but it was a shock to hear that he had died. This afternoon I read an obituary that said he’d gone back to recording music independently in his later years. When I looked for it on Apple Music, I found a song. It was written and recorded in 2018, and it was about, and dedicated to, Willie Nelson.

The title? ‘Autographs in the Rain.’ Returned to me tenfold, you might say.

Those who have read the dedication of one of my books know that when I was two years old, my mother had a stillbirth, a boy, my brother, whose existence, by which I mean his time alive in the womb, was basically denied by the system.

Things may have changed since then, but in 1948, stillbirths were recorded in a closed register. It was the same within my small family. I had no knowledge of the event until I was seven or eight when my dad let something slip while talking to an acquaintance, in my presence. A few years passed before I asked him about it. When I did, he told me, but in the briefest of terms.

It ate away at me but I didn’t follow it up until I was in middle age when a reader told me that the stillbirth register was in fact accessible, on request. I now have a copy of my brother’s non-birth certificate. I carry a piece of him in my heart and the older I grow the more I feel that I am living his life for him.

I am not going into the circumstances, for all I have are third party stories. However what did anger me when I saw the certificate, and still does, beyond mere anger indeed, is the fact that the attending obstetrician was allowed by the system to certify the event, to attribute its cause, and to enter it into the register without counter signature, or any independent endorsement.

‘Feeble’ was one of the words he used. I weighed ten and a half pounds at birth; you may understand why I might need some persuasion of that!

I hope that the stillbirth certification system has been changed at some point in the 75 year existence of the NHS. Finally, I intend to find out. If it hasn’t, the Holyrood Health Secretary will be hearing from me.

Over the years I have gone with Scottish bands above all others. I have an obscure personal connection to Texas. I was a fan of Shuggie and Shout at the apex of their powers. (Who? Work it out) I have been tied to Del Amitri since they wrote and recorded the greatest World Cup song ever. But for quality, creativity, durability and general all round niceness, one stands out; Rock on Deacon Blue.