Quintin Jardine's blog

The older you get, the younger old people seem. Good for your Papa-in-law, but at 82 he isn’t nearly ripe yet.

Trust your mother. She’s right, and where is her age relevant to this? Click on the purchase link on the main site and you’ll find all she wants to know.

I know what you mean. I suspect that old Kurt is as sad in the original Swedish as he is in English, and in the TV version. When I was a kid, I had a French teacher who assured the class that Dr Zhivago was much better in French than in English. I thought he was a poser at the time, but he was right; some translations are better than others and only the multi-lingual can judge between them.

I’ve just watched Tiger Woods apologise to everybody on the planet for his sexual athleticism, before retreating back into ‘therapy’. I’m not entirely sure how what role ‘therapy’ has in instilling  the necessity of keeping one’s cock in one’s pants when one’s wife isn’t around but I’m sure that whoever is  providing it to the Tigger has found a seam of pure gold and is mining it furiously.

My impression after watching the guy is that he’s stunned by the media shit-storm he’s provoked and that it will take a lot of personal courage for him to go out again into its midst. My fear is that he never will, and that we’ve seen the last of him on the golf course. I hope I’m wrong.

Let me get this right. You’re an Aussie and you’re having language difficulty reading Death’s Door? That’s strange because I’m Scottish yet I don’t have any trouble reading Gabrielle Lord. Ah sorry, you’re concerned about the disappearance of good old English swear words. Okay, here’s an offer; you send me a list of your favourite ‘good old English swear words’ and I’ll include them in a future work. Maybe you can teach me some new ones.  Oh, you’re asking why we have to follow the Americans. Maybe you should ask John Howard that question, but I don’t think ‘we’ do. ‘We’ pretty much invented and defined the dictionary of industrial language for the cousins, and every other English speaking nation for that matter, to develop and adapt. That said, my characters’ work-place vocabulary is strictly King James version. Why do they use it at all? Because mostly I write about people and places as they are, and it’s part of many real people. Joking aside, it’s a question that comes up . . . raised invariably by ladies,  in my experience. That’s my standard reply and I’m sticking to it.

I recognise that this is a matter of regret for many people, but it’s becoming more and more difficult to live in the cosy English speaking world, as opposed to the hard boiled, to use an analogy that US mystery fans will understand.  For example, don’t watch live sport on television unless you’re prepared for the songs of the crowds, or for a coach forgetting about the near-by effects mike as he shouts advice to one of his players, or a golfer who’s hit a bad shot when he really, really needed to hit a good one. Don’t even watch it if you can lip-read. Years ago, my friend Jack conducted a work-place poll to choose the official Scottish national anthem. (We don’t have one.)  In third place, Flower of Scotland. Que Sera, Sera, came second. But the overwhelming winner was an untitled terracing song, the simple words of which are, ‘If you hate the ******* English, clap your hands.’ Life as it is lived, English as it is spoken, like it or not.

And it is just another language after all. What’s foul to us might be fair to other people. If I was at a dinner party and  I said to someone, ‘You know, you’re a real cule,’ and I smiled, he’d preen himself and be impressed. But if I said, ‘You know, you’re a real arsehole,’ even if I was still smiling he’d take it ill out, although I’d said exactly the same thing both times. Years ago, my friend Kathy in L’Escala was given a puppy. Being from Carmunnock, she decided she’d like to give it a Scottish name, and she settled on Shona . . . until her Catalan husband and sons told her what that means in their industrial language dictionary.

My point finally being, Bunty, they’re only words and they’ll never break your bones. If you allow them to come between you and an experience that you say you were finding very interesting, then all I can do is ask you how a face feels without the nose?

I admire your persistence, Yolanda, and I thank you for your kindness. You’ve got my day off to a great start. Let me add to yours now. It’s dead easy to find my books in Spain. All you need to do is log on to my website, hit the purchase link, and you’ll find them all, available through http://www.campbellreadbooks.com, and signed into the bargain. The titles are listed on the main website in order of publication, so you can add to your library one by one. By the way,one of my favourite songs is named after you. It’s the anthem of a Cuban singer, Pablo Milanes, who was largely unknown outside Latin America for much of his career. ‘Yolanda’ must be one of his favourite songs too. He’s recorded it at least four times. The very mention of his name has sent me rushing off to iTunes to download his latest album.

Thanks for that. Yes, I have heard of East Coast FM. I’m a listener and now I’m a major supporter of their bid for a community radio licence. Once I get my life back from Skinner 21, I plan to crash their airwaves. Next step, community TV.

I was glancing at the BBC golf website the other day, when a headline caught my eye. The story turned out to be a report of comments made by Tom Watson, who took it upon himself to remark  that when he returns to the PGA tour, Tiger Woods needs to show ‘a bit of humility’. He also took the opportunity to put the boot in over aspects of his on-course behaviour.

Now Tiger’s been a bad boy in the domestic front, no doubt about that, and it showed on his last few appearances on Tour, by his sometimes explosive reactions to bad shots. However these are separate issues, and it’s unfortunate that Watson chose to cover them in the same outburst. No, it’s unfortunate that he chose to cover them at all.

I don’t recall old Tom showing too much humility in 1997, when he divorced his wife of 25 years. I don’t recall Tiger Woods or any other pro golfer choosing to comment on that. And I don’t recall too much humble regret shortly afterwards, when the wife of another pro golfer left her husband for him. But why should he have spoken about it? No reason at all, because these were not professional issues  . . . although Dennis Watson, the second Mrs Watson’s first Mr Watson,  might not agree. As for Tiger’s on-course behaviour, that’s a matter for the Tour Commissioner . . . I don’t recall Tom being elected to that office . . . but since the guy lives his professional life no more than twenty feet away from a live microphone, I have a degree of sympathy for him.

Like many men of my generation, I was sorry when Watson just failed to win the Open last summer. I’ve changed my mind about that.

I received your message. Now I’m wondering whether you’ve got mine.

Will there be a murder in Gullane? I can give no absolute assurances, since we’ve had a couple in the last 30 years, but I can tell you this. If there is, it’ll have nothing to do with me. I’m under lock and key, working on another Skinner.

Along with a fair chunk of the British population, I’ve been watching and reading news reports of Tony Blair’s appearance on Friday before the Chilcot Inquiry. Indeed since the whole pantomime began, I’ve watched as witnesses have been called and examined. I started off with disinterest, then boredom set in, but now it’s been replaced by anger. As an elector, my view of the Iraq invasion at the time was that our Government was doing the right thing for the wrong reasons. Since then, I’ve come to believe that we placed too much faith on an allied administration that might  have been very good at ‘Shock and Awe’, but didn’t have a Scooby (a modern Glaswegian construct, Malcolm) about long-term planning, and I’ve much sympathy with the view that if the Iraqi people didn’t have the balls to rise up and remove the man Blair described as ‘a monster’, then it was over-generous on our part to do the  job for them. We’ve heard a lot over the last week about the legality or otherwise of regime change. That’s what most wars are about, but those wars usually begin in response to an act of aggression. The removal of  Saddam in the course of the 1992 Gulf War would have been logical; to do it ten years later after a decade of crippling sanctions against Iraq, was undoubtedly more controversial to say the least.

But that’s not why I’m angry. Like or loathe, Tony Blair was British Prime Minister  at the time of the Iraq invasion. The proposal to join the Americans was his. The decision to do so was taken by Parliament. That’s our governing body. Its oversight belongs to the people, not to a committee of five pigmies. We had a chance to consider Iraq five years ago, at the last General Election. We could have  thrown out Blair then, but we didn’t; we returned him to office. But the debate didn’t end. Now, facing an election, his successor, finding controversy continuing, has tried to take it out of the political arena by setting up an ‘Independent Inquiry’. Stone me, there have been independent inquiries under way in pubs and sewing circles all over Britain for the last six years. Taken together their findings will be the ones that count, for they’ll be expressed at the general election in a few weeks or months. The circus we’ve been watching for the last few months, a parade before a quintet of titled time-servers under a chairman so distinguished that a chunky section of the media are unable to spell his name correctly, is irrelevant, expensive, and most of all unconstitutional.

Worst of all, it’s diverting attention from the really pressing issue of the day. Afghanistan. Britain is out of Iraq now, but it’s not at peace. Instead its soldiers are facing death and disfigurement on a daily basis in a conflict with no end in sight, and not one of our political leaders, not Bob ‘who?’ Ainsworth, not David Millipede, not the shape-shifting creature that is Jack Straw, not the embattled, bunker-dweller  that Gordon Brown has been since he took unelected office as Prime Minister, no, not a single one, has offered a compelling, definitive reason for  their presence. We are spending people’s lives in a country where we do not belong, in a conflict that we do not understand, for a cause that’s medieval, a throw-back to the Great Crusades . . . and it has to stop!

I’m pleased by your reaction to Inhuman Remains. At of this moment, the two characters you mention are off the list for good . . . but you never know; I’m a capricious sod.

I haven’t been in the Kilspindie Hotel for years, but I’m told that the dining room is excellent under its new ownership. Worry not. A Rush of Blood is on the way. Check out http://www.campbellreadbooks.com for details.

See Weegies? See Weegie kulchur? You ask a fair question, but it doesn’t get switched off at the city boundaries. It’s an expression that’s spread across Scotland. Primavera would have been exposed to it for sure, so why shouldn’t she use it. There’s a page on Glasgow Patter on Wikipedia, but the contributor does more to confuse than educate.

Hello there, how you doing? Thanks for both those coffee tips. I’ll look for the unpronounceable one next time I’m in NB. As for  Harrogate, I can’t say if I’ll ever be back there, but if I am it won’t be in July.

Of course I am. It’s what I’m doing right now, in fact.

You did pretty well, but you missed Rendell, McCall Smith, and my personal favourite, Peedy James. No, I don’t do it in all my books; it’s a one-off.

Skinner on TV? It’s a nasty world, and I’m not sure I want him in it. I’m a reasonable man, but if it ever happens, it will be subject to two conditions. One, I’ll have script oversight; two, nothing will be done to or by any character if I don’t agree with it.

Yes, Black Diamond. It’s a community station, founded by volunteers with a basket of funding support, and  broadcasting in and for Midlothian. There are a few such stations around, for example, Sunny Govan Radio, and Leith FM. No prizes for guessing where either is based. They’re all very local and their footprint isn’t very large, but more power to them. I’ve been on Sunny Govan, and been impressed by it. If I had the time, and the energy, I’d love to get something like that up and running in East Lothian.

I remember that winter, Mary, and I remember the Radio Forth snow line, when the station showed what a force for good it could be. That won’t happen again, because the people who own it today don’t actually care about the communities from which they take their maximised profits.

Is there much tennis played in Scotland? Not a great deal; our climate doesn’t favour it and as you spotted on your visit there is a lack of facilities, both outdoor and, crucially, indoor. Andy Murray will be grateful for your support. He needs all that he can get, yet paradoxically, the more support he has as the lone British standard-bearer, the greater the pressure of expectation on him in the Grand Slam events. I’m no expert on the sport, but it seemed to me that it was too much for Tim Henman in his time. Murray has already achieved more than him in terms of tournament wins, with more than half of his career still before him, but will he break the Slam duck? I hope so, but already it’s inviting comparisons with the wait for Colin Montgomerie to win his first major. However, I suspect that Andy is  stronger mentally than either Tim or Monty. If he can keep his A game together for two weeks, in the right place at the right time, then . . . maybe. I imagine that similar pressure is building on young Australian players. The era of Laver, Rosewall, Hoad and Newcombe is a distant memory, and the next Lleyton Hewitt doesn’t seem to be anywhere in sight.