Quintin Jardine's blog

Okay you’re going to call me a grumpy old ******* but here goes anyway.

Yesterday evening we flew from Newcastle to Girona; on a rough head count as many as 20% of the passengers were children of school age, holiday bound. It may be they were all going on five day breaks and will be back when the English schools reopen on Monday, but forgive me if I doubt that.  Yes, I know that holidays are more expensive in July and August than in June and September, but parents are legally obliged to present their kids at school during term-time and, I would suggest, morally bound also.

I would suggest that UK-wide education authorities should station observers at all airports, because for too many people, when it comes to a choice between sunshine and education, stupidity rules.

Someone in  Pointless must have read my post earlier today! Nonetheless your record still isn’t good, folks.

Georgia Lee ; Tom Waits, from the album Mule Variations. Not a happy song, but the man’s a genius.

Why are there no black contestants on Pointless? Is it made by the same folk who used to make Midsomer Murders, till they got caught?

Finally, now I have a chance to draw breath after a hectic weekend, my heartfelt thanks to everyone who joined me in the big tent at the Edinburgh Book Festival last Thursday afternoon, and also to the guy on my right, my friend and chairman, Brian Taylor.

I enjoyed it; hope you did.

I have just seen the idiot of the week on Pointless, a man who thought that Treasure Island was written by Hans Christian Andersen

“I heard a rumour that Cadbury is bringing out an oriental chocolate bar. Could be a Chinese Wispa.”

That has been voted the funniest joke at this year’s Fringe. Eh? You want funny, try this:

http://www.emophilips.com/video/video/175

Thank you BBC for The White Queen, great gripping knights in armour drama. Fiction rather than history, yes, but bloody good, especially the barking mad Margaret Beaufort.

Too bad there can’t be a second series. They’d pretty much run out of Yorkists at the end.

And so farewell, Top of the Lake. Almost two months of mesmerising drama; it got everything right that Twin Peaks got wrong. Its absence will leave a hole in my Sunday evenings.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/10241770/Barcelona-worst-city-for-holiday-scams.html

This is not news; Barcelona has been this way for ever. Eileen and I were in a taxi last year going past the foot of the Ramblas, when our driver said, unprompted, ‘Un carrer muy peligroso,’ or in English, ‘A very dangerous street.’

My non-Facebook friend Kenneth Roy, back to his perceptive best; read it to the end.

http://www.scottishreview.net/KennethRoy106b.shtml?utm_source=Sign-Up.to&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=8427-300748-The+%27drug+mule%27+from+Lenzie+and+her+Facebook+page+

Come on Eileen – Dexy’s Midnight Runners. I must ask her about that.

Today it’s Slipstream, by Bonnie Raitt. Forty-two years on and she’s still cutting it. Sexuagenarians rule, okay!

Moved on now, to something more conducive to creative thinking that the mind-scrambling SAHB. Rhythm Sessions, by Lee Ritenour; fine guitarist who lets you know he’s there without being too intrusive.

School’s Out. No, not the original, but the great alternative version by the great Sensational Alex Harvey Band; ‘And remember, boys and girls, don’t pish in the water supply’.

NIce day yesterday; 1200 words on the new book, a snooze in the sun, then picked up La Mia from summer school and went to the beach. Today’s plan is much the same, but we’ll go to a different beach. Montgo is just too crowded at this time of year.