Quintin Jardine's blog

One of my buddies filled in an on line form recently. He was given a multiple choice of gender, but ‘male’ was not an option. We are now Cisgender Male or Cisgender Female… or not as the case may be. Google the word and you will find yourself in fairyland. You will be told that

‘Cisgender is a gender identity. Cisgender people have a gender identity that aligns with the sex that a doctor assigned them at birth. For example, a male who is cisgender will identify as a man, and a female who is cisgender will identify as a woman.’

Focus on the phrase, ‘the sex that a doctor assigned them at birth‘. That suggests that doctors have a remit that goes way beyond healing the sick.

You know, I reckon it’s time that those of us who are actually normal . . . that would be the majority . . .fought back against the Woke, and restored a feeling of sanity to our society.

We Buy Any Car

Finally, after much technical wrangling, Resurrection Man, the complete collection of short stories that chronicle the disappearance of the not so late Oz Blackstone, is available in the Amazon Kindle store.

And Tom is in it too. The precursor to a new series? You never know, I have a hankering to go back to St Marti.

We have a few stupid laws in Scotland but the worst is the one that won’t let a supermarket sell alcohol until 10am.

I don’t know why. Does anyone else?

Very few TV commercials achieve longevity. I reckon that the new Amazon ad will prove to be one of those. Lovely, just lovely

Pleasures and privilege of being a Grampar, as she spells it. Right up there is taking her to a shopping mall, aged twelve, an incipient teenager, giving her a certain amount of money and turning her loose.

When it was done, and she had spent that certain amount, exactly, to the last cent, I asked her what she had learned from the exercise. Reply: ‘I learned how to shop!’

I’m five minutes into ‘The Rig‘ a series on Prime. I was drawn in by some fine Scottish actors at the top of the cast list, Martin Compston, Iain Glen, Mark Bonnar, people who don’t usually put a foot wrong.

What I didn’t check out was the director. That’s if there was one, for the thing sounds completely wooden, like a script read-through with the cameras running by mistake. No inflection, no interpretation, no nothing. Should I persevere? Someone tell me please, for I am about to switch off.

What do I think of the lad Sussex? I reckon he is enduring the most public emotional breakdown one can imagine, and the longest lasting with no sign of it ending. The fact that he’s making money in the process is irrelevant, or would be were it not for the fact that Netflix, Oprah, Random House, ITV and all the others who have cashed in on his obvious instability are all making a hell of a lot more than he is. He’s a tragic figure whose therapy following his mother’s violent death in the public eye was to be made, as a twelve year old, to walk through Westminster behind her coffin and then to be banged off to Eton while his father got on with his life and his new relationship. It’s as clear as daylight that he has never got over that, nor has he been given any sort of effective help. He’s a victim and he should be pitied, not pilloried.

What would I have done if I’d been his father? I’d never have let him out of my sight even if he was a constant reminder of his mother.

As I look at this unfolding tragedy, I find myself wondering what kind of man KC3 really is, and also, what’s going on inside the head of his older son.

My favourite film of 2023. 7 Women and a Mystery, on Netflix. Okay, I have only seen one so far, but it cheered me up.

Our expensive rail network is bust. It’s totally unfit for purpose. End of story.

I have begun to rewatch, not for the first time, my all time favourite TV show, The Newsroom, starring Jeff Daniels, Emily Mortimer, Sam Waterstones, and Dev Patel. If it has a fault it lies in Aaron Sorkin’s tendency to cram too many words into a broadcast minute, but every one makes sense so that’s okay.

I’m often asked when Skinner will be adapted for TV,; my answer, ‘Don’t know, don’t care..’ I really mean that. I had a close call once, and learned from that experience. My characters are my creations; they are real to me, so much that I feel a duty of care that would prevent me handing them over to another without the kind of strict guarantees that a production company would not offer.

There’s some very good TV but there’s some garbage too. For example, ‘Granite Harbour,’ the current BBC1 offering. I watched the first episode because it is set in Aberdeen. I binged the rest because I expected it to explode into life. It exploded all right. Took me back to my schooldays and an eedjit with a stink bomb.

I don’t recall ever seeing as many loose end left untied. I don’t recall any other plot that left me wondering wtf it was all about. I don’t recall another series that gave one of the lead characters, the biggest male name on the cast list, a few lines before killing him off in the first five minutes.

I don’t care about any of that. I have escaped. But one question remains, one that really needs answered. Who the hell did Dawn Steele’s hair?