Quintin Jardine's blog

“Bad news for book buyers in Australia. Borders and their parent company, Angus and Robertson, have gone into administration”

That is bad news indeed, Norah, but it is not unprecedented, Borders UK having folded not that long ago. The condition newly applied to your gift card sounds like a stitch-up to me, but if you’re lucky, the in-store offers will be so good you might wind up with A$500 worth and more for the A$100 you have to add to your voucher. Shop wisely, shop often.

If you’ve been commuting through main line rail stations in London . . . Victoria, Liverpool Street, Kings Cross . . . for the last couple of nights you may have seen some people handing out flyers. Hey, you may even have been offered one. If you have, you ‘ll know that what was pressed into your hand were samplers for  A Rush of Blood and The Loner. Several thousand are being distributed in this new Headline initiative and, from what I’ve heard so far, they’re being very well received.

I learned yesterday of the recent death of Charles MacGregor, of Longniddry. In the nine years I spent working in what was then called the Scottish Information Office, Charlie Mac was its director, and as such played a significant influence on my life. I’ve just read Gordon Casely’s generous obituary in today’s Herald newspaper. It told much that I’d never known about the man, and brought back some memories, while expressing a couple of sentinents that I see rather differently. Charles was probably better to  know as a friend than as a colleague, and I’m pleased that I had that opportunity once I left SIO. I’m pleased also that he enjoyed so many years in retirement, surrounded by three generations at the end. My condolences to them all and with those the following: I will always remember him, with gratitude, as the man who changed my life by giving me the opportunity to move to East Lothian, where my family and I remain to this day.

Sun’s shining this morning, but I’m up and almost running. I had a promo email from Easyjet this morning telling me about their latest offers. Every so often I cast an eye over the Easyjet website looking for signs that Stelios might be thinking of introducing a flight from Edinburgh to Barcelona, where he has an established base. So far nothing, but I live in hope. I have no great fondness for the outfit, but at least they’re not Ryanair.

Trevor the farmer was in the fertilised egg business. He had several hundred young layers (hens), called ‘pullets’ and eight or ten roosters, whose job it was to fertilise the eggs. The farmer kept records and any rooster that didn’t perform went into the soup pot and was replaced.

That took an awful lot of his time so he bought a set of tiny bells and attached them to his roosters. Each bell had a different tone so Trevor could tell from a distance, which rooster was performing. Now he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report simply by listening to the bells.

The farmer’s favourite rooster was old Jacob, and a very fine specimen he was too. But on this particular morning Trevor noticed old Jacob’s bell hadn’t rung at all! Trevor went to investigate. The other roosters were chasing pullets, bells-a-ringing. The pullets, hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover.

But to farmer Trevor’s amazement, Jacob had his bell in his beak, so it couldn’t ring. He’d sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one.

Trevor was so proud of Jacob, he entered him in the Polokwane Country Fair and Jacob became an overnight sensation among the judges. The result was the judges not only awarded Jacob the No Bell Piece Prize but they also awarded him the Pullet Surprise as well.

Clearly Jacob was a Pulletician in the making: Who else but a Pulletician could figure out how to win two of the most highly coveted awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the populace and screwing them when they weren’t paying attention.

Do you perhaps know of a Pulletician called Jacob?

Last time I flew Ryanair, the cabin crew were so good that I promised I’d never say anything nasty about Michael O’Leary again. Then I saw the following on the Ryanair website.

http://www.ryanair.com/en/news/ryanair-s-five-year-girona-extension-collapses-as-new-government-backtracks-on-deal

What Ryanair don’t tell you is that the so-called ‘deal’ was all about the amount of public money the former Catalan Government, facing an imminent and probably unwinnable election, was prepared to offer Ryanair to maintain services out of Girona. All it’s doing now is cutting out its loss-makers and trimming costs on the marginals, but it’s convenient to blame it on someone else. Mr Michael Cawley’s weasel words in his press release suggest that the newly elected government had signed off on the deal. That is not my understanding. For years Ryanair has been bullying regional and national governments all over Europe into paying them questionable subsidies. Now someone has stood up to them and  they don’t like it. Maybe Mr Cawley and his friends should realise that theirs is not the most popular nation in Europe right now, and should see the irony in an Irish company trying to screw vast amounts of taxpayer money out of a nation which is itself in economic difficulty. Over could it be that they are playing hardball because of those difficulties? Either way, let us hope that other carriers move in to fill the spare  capacity that the unloved Paddyair has created in an airport recently expanded to cope with the increased traffic that they promised. (By the way while this is happening, Ryanair are expanding services at the seriously underused Barcelona El Prat Terminal 2, where, I suspect, they can still dictate terms.)

Note: I still haven’t said anything nasty about Michael O’Leary. He’s far too good at PR to get himself associated too closely with shit like this.

I note that the US Senate has voted to extend the surveillance powers given to the government by the USA Patriot Act, but it is at odds with the House of Representatives over the length of the extension, so it has limited it to 90 days. As an outside observer, I find the name of the statute disturbing. It’s more than a little jingoistic and smacks somehow of the McCarthy Era, yet it’s actually an acronym, the name of the legislation being, Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act 2001. Someone must have sat up all night dreaming that one up.

Suggestions for Scottish or UK legislation along similar lines? How about a statute to improve public access to woodland?  Name of, Forestry And Recreational Territory Act, 2011? Over to you.

Not too many people in Catalunya are happy right now, given the result at the Emirates, but two who are live right here in L’Escala. Step forward the Bosch brothers, members of a true minority group, in that they are supporters of FC Espanyol. Not so much a Partick Thistle analogy, more Third Lanark, if they were still around. Let them not be too happy, though; that away goal still puts them in the euro seats for the second leg.

The answer to last Sunday morning’s quiz. Starbucks takes its name (in part) from the first mate of the Pequod, Captain Ahab’s whaling vessel in Moby Dick. One of the three founders wanted to call the business Pequod, until his partners pointed out that the pronunciation might not be right for a hot beverage enterprise, so they came up with a compromise. (Yes, it’s also attributed [in part] to a mountain camp called Starbo, on Mount Rainier; I acknowledge that to deter nit-picking.)

All of which leads me to a story this morning that Japan has suspended its annual Antarctic whale hunt, because of the activities of a campaign group called  the Sea Shepherds. Nice name, but don’t they know what happens to most lambs? That said, cynically, we must acknowledge that there is a global instinctive aversion to whale-hunting and that most Herman Melville readers were firmly on the side of the great white whale. Me too. I’m against it, for much the same reasons that I’m against cannibalism. Because of that I now restrict my own diet. I’m too old/lack the moral courage (you choose)  to go completely vegan, but it’s a long time since I had a steak, and baby sheep are absolutely not an option, not even bhuna fashion. My wife is less scrupulous than I am, but she hasn’t touched suckling pig since I pointed out that she was eating Winnie the Pooh’s little mate.

Where do I not draw the line? Shark, swordfish, monkfish are all okay by me for consumption; they would eat me if they could, so game on.

I’ve seen some stuff in my time, but for a professional footballer to attack a member of the opposition coaching team, that’s a first. Any young professional athlete who head-butts a 59 year-old man deserves the severest sanctions. When that almost senior citizen is one Joe Jordan, he also deserves a brain scan. I can only assume that Gennaro Gattuso, of Milan, nutted big Joe in the certain knowledge that everyone around would separate them. If there was any justice in the world they would all have stood back and let nature take its course. Had they done so, the final score would definitely have been Scotland 1 — Italy 0.

Craig Brown’s a nice man, no question; among football people, one of the nicest. So I hope he doesn’t take this personally when I say that no football result this season has pleased me more than tonight’s at Pittodrie, Aberdeen. No, that’s not true; I don’t give a bugger whether he takes it personally or not.

I see that the Italian Prime Minister is in yet another wee bit of bother. Maybe more than a wee bit, since the charge he’s facing carries up to fifteen years in the slammer. Here’s a suggestion, Silvio. How about engaging Tommy Sheridan as counsel for the defence?

Another bad night for Chelsea; shame. The general reaction in Spain to the Fernando Torres transfer is, ‘They paid HOW MUCH for him?’ I heard the sage that is Ray Wilkins express concern this morning that Chelsea might win the Premier League for Arsenal by beating Man U twice. While this is true, that scenario does not seem to be worrying the bookies too much, certainly not as much as it is worrying Ray.

News from the L’Escala front. La Guapa Mia has her first sleep-over at granny’s place last night. Seemed to enjoy it, and still is, from the noises I hear from outside.

Success this morning ; the car passed its ITV (Inspeccion tecnico de vehiculos) with flying colours, the only glitch coming when the examiner couldn’t find the chassis number. It’s a very efficient process, run by an agency, and next time I’ll know to check in at the office before going into the inspection bay.

Back to work now, but there are granny noises coming from the room below my office so we’ll see how long that lasts.

The next Skinner is scheduled for UK publication in June. I’m not sure when it will be released in South Africa, but probably around the same time. Even then, there’s always Campbell Read Books, if you’d like one signed.

Where did Starbucks get its name?

Ed Millipede is taking the piss, isn’t he? Seems he went to Wales yesterday and accused the government of taking a big gamble with the economy. That’s rich, from someone who was a member of the most suicidally profligate administration of our time, from the man who wrote, and has since disowned, the last Labour Manifesto, from the man who sat round the cabinet table with the guys who spent all the money and then left notes boasting about it, from the acolyte whose former deputy leader is now reduced to doing embarrassing TV ads for price comparison websites, based on an assault upon an angry elector, for which, astonishingly he was never prosecuted, when anyone else in the land would have been. Sorry Ed, memories aren’t that short. STFU.

The person I mentioned on the Stuart Cosgrove thing wasn’t my first primary teacher. She was a lovely wee wumman called Chrissie Parker, who played the harmonium, and onky ever belted one boy for being very, very bad. After her I had a lady called Miss (Roberta) Forrest, who left to become Kirsty Wark’s mum. The likes of your infant experience and my child-chucker were in the minority, I am glad to say. There were only two real beasts in Knowetop when I was there, although I did stand near to the deputy head at Fir Park one day after I’d left, and thought that if I’d used language like his, in his class, I’d have been belted till the blood ran.