Quintin Jardine's blog

Tonight’s the night.

This evening, at 8:15pm, I’ll be appearing at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, chaired by my good friend Peter Guttridge. If you’re coming, we’re looking forward to seeing you. If not . . . there might still be a few tickets available, if you hurry.

I’ve just seen a TV ad by NatWest. It claims that the RBS subsidiary issues a mortgage every four minutes or some such. Fine, but how many homes do they repossess?

It was like summertime in Gullane yesterday.

Wait a minute: it was summertime!

Last week I had a visit, at my request, from a double glazing salesman. A couple of days later, I was contacted by email by Trustpilot, and asked to rate and review the experience. Not something I normally do, but on this occasion I did. I gave it two stars and added this comment:

‘I asked ******* to quote for a project in my home after a visit from *******, having been lured into considering that company by the quality of its advertising. Its salesman came along, looked at my needs, played with his computer for a while, then printed out a figure that took my breath away, not just because it was over 50% above the maximum I reckoned reasonable, after a degree of preparatory research into the unit cost of materials to DIY customers, but also because it included a purported 60% discount from a top line price that was quite laughable. Frankly, the ******* approach was an insult to my intelligence, but I kept my face straight and told the salesman I would consider his quotation and get back to him. He left as fast as he could pack up his lap-top. 

‘At that point I decided to ask ******* to call on me. They did, within 24 hours. Their salesman was constructive and efficient, and did his work without the need for bells and whistles, or computer programmes. His offer price, on a take it or leave it basis, undercut ******* by around 20%, but . . . it was still presented as a heavy discount on normal list price. 

‘As if I gave a damn. I don’t care what figure double-glazing companies pluck out of the air, nor does anyone else with a few functioning brain cells. I want honest straightforward pricing that doesn’t take me for an idiot and isn’t designed to force me into an instant decision on a significant capital project.

‘******* may well get the job, after a little of the haggling its salesman said he couldn’t do, but its approach, which is industry-wide from what I can judge from this and other experiences, doesn’t exactly inspire trust.’

Today, the company’s response appeared below my review, as follows:

‘Sorry to hear you feel this way. Every job we do is tailored to our customers, as *******’s products are bespoke. 

‘All of our windows and doors are individually made to fit perfectly, therefore, our pricing structure cannot be compared to those of 3rd parties. While ******* always try to operate a transparent and competitive pricing structure, we regularly run different incentives and discounts which are applied at the sales appointment.

‘Hope this helps clarify.

‘Thanks

‘Louie (Customer Care Dept.)’

Actually, Louie, it clarifies nothing. It’s blindingly obvious that in your sector every company’s windows and doors are (or should be) made to fit perfectly. That has nothing to do with your pricing structure, and doesn’t lead to the conclusion that your prices shouldn’t be compared with your competitors. If you’d read my review properly, you’d have understood that my dissatisfaction isn’t with your structure but with your sales practice, which is completely opaque. Contrary to your company’s belief, and that of your competitor, bullshit doesn’t baffle brains.

(As it happens, neither ******* not ******* got the job. It went to a third party, a much smaller contractor, who looked at the project, understood what I wanted, drew me an acceptable plan on the spot, went away to cost it, and called me back two days later with an acceptable quote.)

Money Help Marketing has promised to add my number to its DNC list. I assume that stands for Do Not Call, rather that Dial NCessantly. Hope I’m right.

Last night I made it to the end: of the second series of True Detective. In truth I lost touch with the plot around half way through and even after a Poirot-like summing up in the final episode I still couldn’t join all the dots. Even today questions remain. For example: How could an actor as large as Vince Vaughan manage to be two-dimensional in one of the lead roles? Did Bezzarides have a Christian name? If so what was it? However I was not at a loss when the producers stuck to one of the rules of film to which there are few exceptions: it rarely ends well for Colin Farrell.

On July 27, I posted about some annoying nuisance calls I’d been receiving. They’ve continued ever since, but finally I’ve managed to trace the source.

They come from an outfit called Money Help Marketing, in Sale. They specialise in what they call Lead Generation, in other words, freelance cold-calling. Their website is http://moneyhelpmarketing.co.uk and their number is 0333 002 0139.

I’ve asked them, politely so far, to stop. If they don’t I will have my revenge by calling them every hour on the hour, leaving the line open and playing them selections from Kinky Friedman’s Greatest Hits. If ‘Old Ben Lucas’ doesn’t do it, I may have to employ my own specialists.

I had an email this morning from National Rail, telling me they miss me, and offering me a £5 discount if I renew my Senior Railcard, which I let lapse last year. That would bring the cost down to £25, and would get me one third off fares for a year.

I have a senior railcard in Spain, a Tarjeta Dorada. It costs €6, gets me a 40% discount, and pays for itself on one trip from  Figueres to Barcelona.

Say no more.

A couple of nights ago, I watched a programme on Sky Arts. It isn’t usually a channel of choice, but there was a reason. On offer was an hour and more of Les Paul and his Trio, filmed live in the Iridium Jazz Club on Broadway during the old man’s 90th birthday celebrations in 2005.

Three years earlier, Eileen and I had a holiday in New York. On day one, I looked through a What’s On mag in the hotel, and found Les’s weekly Monday gig advertised. I was surprised, as I’d assumed he had been playing the celestial Gibson for a few years. We booked, and enjoyed the best evening of our trip.

The Iridium is a compact venue and watching the TV show was just like being back there. Les didn’t make it through 2009, but he was playing almost to the end. If you have access through catch-up TV, I urge you to download it, to see a latter-day miracle at work.

So farewell, Cilla. RIP

There’s been chatter on Facebook by folk complaining about the prominence given to her passing by sections of the UK media who normally pay scant attention to the celebrity world. To them all I can say is that Cilla was greater than the  physical space she occupied, while the opposite is true of most celebs. For people like her even Guardian readers will shed the occasional tear.

Sitting with my grandson yesterday, looking at photos on the iPad. He reached out and swiped the screen, to move on to the next image. Rex is not yet 18 months old.

I’m not saying that he’s a genius . . . not yet. When Mia was two she could call up a video on her dad’s tablet. But it sure is a sign of the times.

That’s the worst spell of weather I can imagine, and it’s what we’ve been having in Gullane for the last couple of days. We have custody of the grand-dog and even he is complaining.

So what’s this with Hulk Hogan, the ‘wrestler’,  who it was said ‘wouldn’t know the difference between a wrist-lock and a wrist-watch’? Abruptly fired from the WWE after excerpts from a covertly (and possibly illegally) recorded tape, in which he used some fruitily racist language, were leaked on the internet.

Sack him for sure, but the recording is eight years old, and much of its content was known already. It is the subject of an imminently pending court action by Hogan, an action for $100million against a sleazy website called Gawker, which paid cash money for it. Also it was supposedly sealed by the court.

I’m not in the slightest interested in what a geriatric grappler may or may not have said in what he thought was the privacy of his friend’s wife’s bedroom, but I would like to know: who leaked the recording? I imagine the court will too.

Has anyone else been receiving automated calls from a woman telling you that you need to book a Green Deal Assessment before 2016? I have, even though I’m registered with the Telephone Preference Service and shouldn’t be receiving cold calls.

After about a dozen of these intrusions, finally I did as I was told and pressed ‘2’ to book my assessment while they are ‘in my area’. Hopefully someone will turn up at my door, so that I can tell them to fuck off, face to face. I’ve tried with the computer, but it doesn’t work.

Sasha died at noon today: he was 18 years old, a good age for a Tonkinese. For the last week he had become increasingly listless, uncomfortable and clearly unwell, making the trip to the vet, and his diagnosis, inevitable.

I stayed with him until the end, and beyond. When you commit yourself to a pet, it’s part of the job, an obligation and a way of showing the same affection that he has given to you. 

Sash was a character, a scrapper in his younger days but never given to bringing home friends and dismantling them in the hall. He lived an independent life but was always an integral part of our household, and a vocal one too.

I’ll miss him like hell, and I’m sad when I dwell on the fact that I’ll never again hear him yell for food, or attention, or anything else. But I don’t feel bad, because we both knew that I’d got the moment right. He was in a bad place, it couldn’t get any better, and no way was I going to let it get any worse.

So long, buddy, and thanks for the laughs, the loyalty and the love.

My posting yesterday of my ludicrous chat session with Vodafone’s so-called help desk may have put a light-hearted glow on something we should be considering more seriously.

Having reached and passed a milestone last week I’m more acutely aware than before of a fundamental truth. Vodafone isn’t the only organisation to run an on-line or telephone customer service set-up that is either incompetent, or deliberately understaffed. It isn’t the only company that is prepared to keep its clients waiting for inordinate periods for assistance that may never arrive or when it does, will prove to be utterly useless.

Every time they do so, these businesses are effectively stealing a piece of our lives, time that we’ll never have again, time that could be spent constructively.

To me such behaviour is criminal; I can’t find another word for it. Surely the moment has come for government to act to ensure that it is treated accordingly.

This is as it happened:

There is a very nice piece on Skinner and me in a newish magazine called ‘This Is Rotary‘. It’s produced not only for Rotarians but for a wider audience, with the aim of spreading the word about the movement.

The article is the work of Joy Chatters, who produces the magazine with her editor husband, Herbert. It’s based on a conversation that she and I had a few weeks back, over Skype. That technology is very useful, but it isn’t perfect, and can lead to misunderstandings. Against that background, and with no criticism of Joy, I’d like to make one small correction to the text. The American writer I regard as the true father of the crime genre, is not Hammond Innes, but Dashiell Hammett.

I shared on Facebook earlier  this morning a BBC story about an English university that is spending public money introducing and re-branding ‘All-gender Toilets’ for the ease and comfort of what it says is ‘a growing population of Trans students’.

In a statement, the University of Northampton said the move was designed so that “there will be no situation in which two people of any gender identity will be in the same room, ensuring they can feel comfortable using the space”.

Hopefully a further statement will be issued explaining what the f*** that means.

Anyway, in the course of absorbing this nonsense, I could not help but notice that ‘LGBT’, a term with which I am familiar and comfortable, has now become ‘LGBTQ’.

‘Hold on a minute!’ I exclaimed, and set to work researching. It seems that there are alternative interpretations of the brand-new ‘Q’. One says it means ‘Questioning’; the other translates it as ‘Queer’, a term in the course of being ‘reclaimed’.

Whatever, I want to make it clear; it has nothing to do with me.