Quintin Jardine's blog

Thanks for your frankness; balance is always good, and I appreciate your perseverance. Yes, there will be more Skinners. Next year’s is already done and more or less dusted and the two after that are in my head. Look out for the next Primavera, As Easy as Murder, in January.

So Bob has sneaked out from behind the shadow of old John? Whatever, welcome to the club. I envy your location in Western Canada, as you’ll realise if you follow my Afterword blogs  in this week’s National Post. I wish I had time to see more of it.

Thanks for that. I’m very pleased by the response to  The Loner. I have faith in it and in the characters. It was meant to be a one-off, yes, but Xavi’s stuck in my head and he won’t go away. I may need to find him another outlet, though.

Will Skinner go back in time again? It’s a possibility, but before he does, he has problems in the present day that need some serious sorting out.

My neighbour knocked on my door at 2:30am this morning, can you believe that – 2:30am?!

Luckily for him I was still up playing my Bagpipes.

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I sat on the train this morning opposite a stunning Thai girl.

I kept thinking to myself, please don’t get an erection, please don’t get an erection… but she did.

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Did you hear about the fat alcoholic transvestite?

All he wanted to do was eat, drink and be Mary.

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Paddy says “Mick, I’m thinking of buying a Labrador .”

“Blow that” says Mick – “have you seen how many of their owners go blind”

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My girlfriend thinks that I’m a stalker.

Well, she’s not exactly my girlfriend yet.

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I woke up last night to find the ghost of Gloria Gaynor standing at the foot of my bed.

At first I was afraid…….then I was petrified.

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What’s the difference between Iron Man and Iron Woman?

One’s a superhero and the other is an instruction.

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I was explaining to my husband last night that when you die you get reincarnated but must come back as a different creature.

He said “I would like to come back as a pig.”

I said “You’re obviously not listening.”

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Doctors have just identified a food that can cause grief and suffering years after it’s been eaten.

It’s called a wedding cake.

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I was in the pub with my wife last night and I said “I love you.” She said “Is that you or the beer talking?”

I replied “It’s me talking to the beer.”

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The wife has been missing a week now. Police said to prepare for the worst.

So I have been down to Red Cross to get all her clothes back.

Good to hear that the lad is raising his game. I will pass that on to his uncle (not dad). Look after yourself.

A couple of days ago, I used the NCP Castle Terrace Park, in Edinburgh. Some changes since my last visit. No more tickets; now you collect a plastic chip, so you have no visible evidence of the time you checked in. There are no signs advising users of charges, either at the entrance or by the pay-points. There must be one somewhere but it is not obvious. When I put my chip in the slot on leaving, the screen told me that I had been there for one hour nine minutes and it was going to cost £5.90; run of the mill for central London, where NCP is based, but in Edinburgh, well, bugger that for a game of soldiers. A complaint has been lodged with Trading Standards; let’s see what happens.

Did a signing at Costco today, and was asked to sign a book, for his wife Anne, by the greatest back row forward ever to pull on a Scotland rugby shirt. My pleasure. I hope you enjoy Grievous Angel, Mrs Jeffrey.

Thanks for that, I’ll pass your congratulations on to Jim and Hilary, the readers. I’ll be happy to sign a book for your son. You might like to remind him that Father’s Day’s coming up soon also.

This from Alistair Beaton, a regular correspondent:

 I enjoy the jokes you publish in your blog and thought this one would appeal to you.

‘After having dug to a depth of 10 feet last year, Canadian scientists found traces of copper wire dating back 200 years and came to the conclusion that their ancestors already had a telephone network more than 150 years ago.

‘Not to be outdone by their neighbours, in the weeks that followed, an American archaeologist dug to a depth of 20 feet, and shortly after, a story published in the New York Times:
“American archaeologists, finding traces of 250-year-old copper wire, have concluded that their ancestors already had an advanced high-tech communications network 50 years earlier than the Canadians”.

‘One week later, the British authorities reported the following:
“After digging as deep as 30 feet in East-Fife, Shuggy Gilchrist, a self-taught archaeologist from Methil Hill, reported that he found absolutely f*** all.
Shug has therefore concluded that 250 years ago, Scotland had already gone wireless.”

Just makes you bl**dy proud to be a Jock, eh?’

Tough luck, Your Majesty. Yes, HM’s horse finished third in the Derby. Too bad Lester isn’t around, any more. He’d have carried the beast over the line.

Thanks to the Globe and Mail, Toronto, for inviting me to do the following

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/books/quintin-jardine-a-pool-and-an-e-reader/article2046424/

A guy goes to the post office to apply for a job. The interviewer asks him, “Are you allergic to anything?” He replies, “Yes, caffeine.I can’t drink coffee.”   “Ok, Have you ever been in the military service?” “Yes,” he says, “I was in Iraq for one tour.” The interviewer says, “That will give you 5 extra points toward employment.” Then he asks, “Are you disabled in any way?” The guy says, “Yes. A bomb exploded near me and I lost both my testicles.” The interviewer grimaces and then says, “Okay. You’ve got enough points for me to hire you right now. Our normal hours are from 8:00 am to 4:00 PM. You can start tomorrow at 10:00 am, and plan on starting at 10:00 am every day.” The guy is puzzled and asks, “If the work hours are from 8:00 am to 4:00 PM, why don’t you want me here until 10:00 am?” “This is a government job”, the interviewer says. “For the first two hours, we just stand around drinking coffee and scratching our balls. No point in you coming in for that.”

Top of the Scottish news this morning was a think tank proposal that the notion of a single Scottish police force should be binned and the present eight force structure should be replaced by thirty-two local forces. I’m not sure who was in that tank, but whoever, they couldn’t have been thinking too hard. While I am dead against a unitary force, and would like to see Strathclyde broken into at least three units, going to thirty-two seems crazy, particularly so if these are to be overseen at local level adding to the burdens on Scotland’s councils at a time when they are being pressed to lower costs and increase efficiency.

You’re missed Inhuman Remains. Oz is dead; get over it. (But so was Bobby Ewing, wasn’t he?)

Just about to do an email interview for the Courier newspaper, in advance of my Dundee visit next week. One of the questions is about Sepp Blatter; that should be fun.

Checked in already for the flight home next Monday; my Ryanair boarding pass is on my desk. They are so keen on cost-cutting and speedy turnarounds that travellers are expected to partly tear off the slip that’s retained at the boarding gate. I guess that gives them more time to tell you that your cabin bag is a centimetre too wide and that they’re going to charge you thirty quid to put it in the hold. Either that or they tell you that it’s a little overweight, then stand by as you take clothes from it and put them on over those you’re already wearing and stuff smaller items in your pockets. Yes, I know, the same total weight goes into the cabin, but don’t laugh, because I’ve seen them do that. And have you ever noticed that however carefully you weigh your bag before you leave home it always manages to put on a kilo or so during the journey to the airport?

As regular blog visitors must know by now, I’m a fervent supporter of a fully independent Scottish government, within a United Kingdom and the European Union. But that doesn’t mean I believe that everything my party’s leadership does is correct by definition. For example, the threat by the Scottish Justice Secretary to withhold funding for the UK Supreme Court is a piece of bombastic, blustering nonsense. Kenny McAskill has a reputation for shooting from the lip that extends beyond Scotland, but normally he thinks issues through more clearly before  pushing the ‘intemperate’ button. From what I’ve read of the judgement of the Nat Fraser case he’s chasing the wrong hare. Jurisdiction is a side issue, and not the first that should concern him. The unanimous finding of five Supreme Court judges, who included two last holders of Scotland’s highest judicial office, was so obviously correct that not a single voice has been raised against it since it was handed down. The question that the Scottish public are entitled to ask is; why did Mr Fraser’s lawyers have to go to London in the first place? Why didn’t our senior judges reach the same conclusion?

Alex Salmond, our First Minister, has a point when he expresses concern that the UK Supreme Court appears to have backed into criminal appeal matters that were meant to have been reserved for the Scottish Bench, and he has done the right thing by asking people who know what they’re talking about to consider the issues and report back to him, prior to a Scottish parliamentary debate. But he would be helped by two things, the first being, a clearer recognition by Scottish judges of the implications of European human rights provisions, the second being that Kenny McAskill should stop chasing headlines.

We’ve been in Spain for two weeks now, doing the things that grandparents do. For all of that time it has been unseasonably hot, but not any more. The Tramuntana, the north wind that drives men crazy, is blowing hard from the Pyrenees, touching 80kph, and that’s interesting. Forecast is that it will remain with us until Wednesday, but they can never be quite certain. The local sages reckon it either lasts for three days, seven days, or eleven days, but I’ve known it go on for a hell of a lot longer than that.

They tell me that The Loner is due for release in Canadian bookstores this week, with the mass market version following in August. I’m pleased, for I’m a regular visitor to that friendly and civilised nation, and hope to be heading there again in the not too distant. Globe and Mail readers should keep their eyes open for a QJ presence in the next couple of weeks, under  the  auspices of my good friends Martin Levin and Jack Kirchhoff.