Quintin Jardine's blog

Our sympathies are with all you Queenslanders. AJ just processed an order from a buyer in Brisbane; he made sure the packaging was waterproof. We’ve been complaining about show for the last month. Rather twice the amount than half of what you guys have experienced. Snow melts and goes way; the aftermath of flooding can stay around for years.

I watched a very strange football match on telly last night. West Ham were playing Arsenal, and they were thumped. ‘What’s strange about that?’ you ask. Of itself, nothing, but the match was played against the extraordinary background of that morning’s newspapers, announcing that the Hammers’ manager, the experienced and well-liked Avram Grant, would be fired after the game, and replaced by Martin O’Neill, who walked out on his last club in the summer in an apparent dispute over transfer policy. The rumours of the change were so strong that they could only have come from a source within the football club itself. They could have been dispelled by a strong statement by the club’s owners, but they weren’t. Instead the match went ahead with the TV cameras spending more time looking at the technical areas than at the pitch, and at the end, Avram threw his club scarf into the crowd, a gesture that was interpreted as one of farewell. This morning there are suggestions that  Martin O’Neill isn’t too keen on the job after all. Who could blame him? Would you want to work for people like that?

Just checked and find that Somewhere Over the Rainbow is in the top five best sellers in the political fiction section of the Amazon UK Kindle store. My thanks to everyone who put it there.

‘Such a perfect day, I’m glad I spent it with you’.

The you in question being the step-granddaughter, Mia, who is now going on for seven months old, and who seems to have taken a shine to Avi Quint. Abuela Eileen and I took her for a walk this afternoon, to give her mum some personal time. It was going on for 20c in L’Escala, so we went to the beach and back. She was sound asleep when we got home, and stayed that way for some time. Brownie points.

This evening granny and I ate out in Cal Galan, one of the real Old Town restaurants. It’s been a while since I had hamburger and chips and a few canyas. F****** magic.

I’m not in the first flush of youth. I’m not even in the first flush of middle age. That means that I’m resolutely opposed to ageism. Therefore I welcomed the enlightened decision of the employment tribunal that ruled in favour of Miriam O’Reilly, a female BBC presenter who was ditched on the ground that high definition television would pick up her wrinkles. (She certainly looked bloody good at her press conference, on camera with her solicitors’ practice logo as the back-drop. How tacky was that?)

Yes, well done Miriam, but . . . I fear the downside may be that our national broadcaster, which normally has a fetish for political correctness, will react by going to the other extreme and flooding the airwaves with fifty-something presenters regardless of whether they’re any good at the job. We may also even people going out of their way to seem deliberately dowdy. I caught the BBC news channel yesterday; at the time there were two female presenters, and one of them bore a strong resemblance to an unmade bed. I wondered if that was a political statement of a sort, or whether the producer of the day was simply afraid to suggest that she might have tidied herself up.  (Before anyone thinks I’m being sexist here, let me add that in his BBC days, Adrian Chiles seemed to take pride in going on air looking like a slob who’d been hauled out of the pub next door.)

I read today that President Obama intends to ease restrictions on citizens travelling to Cuba. It seems that religious groups and students will be able to go there, but that the general ban on travel to the USA’s nearest offshore neighbour will remain in place. I was seventeen years old at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, so I understand, possibly better than some younger Americans, the underlying reasons behind the isolation of the Castro regime. Also I hesitate ever to lecture another nation about its politics when our own leave much to be desired. Yet I do wonder whether anyone has considered whether a policy that denies entry to the modern evolving world, by hamstringing a national economy through a fifty-year trade embargo, is ever likely to lead to reconciliation. I know that the President has to walk a fine line. Perhaps this announcement (and even that has been opposed by Florida Republicans)  is the first step towards a more general relaxation.

Primavera will be pleased to hear that. Her third adventure, As Easy as Murder, will be out there in almost exactly a year from now. Seems like a while, I know, but I have to fit in The Loner, in March and Grievous Angel, that’s Skinner 21, in June.

That’s a nice story; I’m glad you have those memories. I spent the first year of my life in Wishaw, and my dad was born there.

Maybe you’re making life difficult for yourself. I can shop from the UK on Amazon.com, so why shouldn’t you be able to do the reverse? However, you should take another look at the Amazon US site; the books are all there, in the Kindle store. Download the free software and you can access them through your computer, lap-top, iPad, iPhone or just about anything else.

Good old democratic Scotland is currently considering messing about with the police forces. Bob will not be best pleased if his force is merged into a single constabulary, and neither will I. I envisaged a situation a few books ago in which a fictional First Minister tried to do just that. He came to a sticky end, and so might the real Mr Salmond if he chances his arm. Politicians and police should be kept well apart.

God bless you Marjory. I hope you make it to Sevilla and Madrid. You might consider taking the high speed train. It’s a great way to travel.

I make that over 2000 novels. Yes, I reckon you can claim expert status. But expert what? That’s the question.

Sorry I’ve been off line for a couple of weeks, but I’ve been experiencing IT problems. Last April I decided to change to Apple hardware, for a whole raft of reasons, but mainly because their machines look nice and are blazing fast. I must have copped a Monday morning one, for after a full system reinstall in November, my hard disk gave up the ghost just as 2010 was drawing to a close. At that time of year, nothing happens quickly, but the repairer in Ponteland did a fine job as soon as the machine reached him. Thanks Michael. Less than warm thanks to Steve Jobs, though. The boss of Apple takes no responsibility for recovering data lost by the catastrophic collapse of one of his machines; that cost is down to the customer, even if the failed computer is one day out of the factory. Does that seem fair to you? No, I didn’t think it would.

Hey, thanks to Mr Foster. I share your concern. I’d love to be widely availablen  in German, and I have a good man working at that on my behalf.

I began my working life on a newspaper, but before that I studied law for a while. Not much of it stuck, but the basics did. For example, the presumption of innocence, and the right of every accused to a trial before a fair-minded jury, unfettered by any knowledge of the detail of the case. That knowledge informed my time as a journalist. In those days we were careful about what was said about anyone arrested, and once a charge was laid, that was it.

Has something changed when I wasn’t looking? Has the American practice of aggressive, prejudicial investigation been introduced to Britain?  I ask this because what’s been reported in the wake of the arrest in the Yates murder enquiry is beginning to resemble trial by media. I haven’t done a trawl of the English press. So far I’ve only  looked at the Torygraph, but I have no doubt that it’s typical, and I don’t like what I see. Its story suggests that the arrested man was the last person to see Ms Yeates alive, and adds that he is the only suspect in the case. It leads with the allegation that he helped the victim’s partner ‘fix his car, so he could drive to Sheffield’. But read on, and you’ll find that what unnamed neighbours say is merely that he came up with a set of jump leads, and  that he wasn’t alone in the helping. If I was a juror I wouldn’t see that as tantamount to ‘fixing’ and  I wouldn’t take it to imply exclusive  knowledge that the bloke was going away for the weekend and that the victim would be alone in her flat. The report also quotes pupils at the school where he taught as saying that he is a fan of dark and violent avant garde films. Wait a minute! He retired in 2001; he could have moved on to Pixar animation by now. But even if he hasn’t, if that unsubstantiated  foible from ten years back counts as evidence, hey, lock me up too, for I watched ElectraGlide in Blue last night. To be fair to the Torygraph, it does offer ‘defence’ evidence also, by citing a neighbour who points out that the arrested man is slightly built, and who suggests that he would not have been strong enough to do what has been suggested.

They’ll sell some newspapers on the back of it, no question. That’s what they’re there to do, and I’m not going to blame them for it. No, what I find disturbing is the way in which information has flowed to the media, and its source. The feeding frenzy was started by the police, when they made their arrest and then removed, very publicly, two cars, and a large quantity of material from the man’s home. They don’t appear to have said very much on the record, but the ‘lone suspect’ titbit could only have come from one place, and on what we used to call a ‘non-attributable basis’ in my media days. What’s happened? The cops are under pressure for an early result, a suspect has fallen into their laps, and they’re steering the media towards him. Simples.

All of which takes me back to the presumption of innocence. I can’t recall a British case in which it has been more conspicuously absent. I find myself hoping that the police do charge this man, almost for his sake. If they don’t, if the forensic evidence proves his innocence, not his guilt, and he’s released? I’ll bet Max Clifford has his mobile number already.

Today’s issue of the Torygraph also quotes our foreign secretary as expressing concern over the handling of the Khodorovsky case in Russia. Maybe he should ensure that his own house is clean before criticising others.

Fortunately, I believe  the New Year Honours List is past praying for as far as the England cricket team is concerned. In any event you are right. Best wait for another few days, in the hope that you can grind their faces deeper in the dust. But when you do so, remember that they have a long history of being better than you and will surely rebound. They may even win the last test and square the series, although at the moment the odds on a draw are better than those on an Aussie victory. Even if that happens, the triumphalism will only be toned down a little, and the Barmy Army will sing just as loud. (Why is it that at the heart of such gatherings you will always find a tosser in a tall hat, making the most noise?) You can bet that among all the media praise, little mention will be made of the significant South African contribution to the current England batting line-up. Take Pietersen, Prior, Strauss and Trott out of the picture and the result might have been different. Okay, you can keep the captain and the wicket-keeper, but KP only left South Africa in a huff, and Trott played for  them at Under 15 and Under 19 level. But let’s not be churlish; England’s success is meritorious, if for nothing else, because it will force Kevin Bloody Wilson to re-write his notorious song, They Beat Me.

I haven’t bought George W Bush’s autobiography yet, but I will, once I get to  the end of  the Kindle sampler. I have to get deeper into the mind of a man who admits to killing his kid sister’s goldfish by pouring vodka into its bowl. I suspect that if Osama had read that  story, he’d have thought several times before messing with him.

Do I have plans for a new Bob Skinner? No, but I do for the old one, beginning with Grievous Angel next June. That’ll be after the publication in March  of The Loner, in which he also plays a significant, although not leading, part.

Eddie Sanderson was my oldest close friend. He’s been in my life for fifty years, since he started going out with my cousin. They were married for a while, but when they split, Eddie and I just went on, unimpeded. Forty years ago, he and Liz produced their only child, and it was she who phoned me yesterday to tell me that her dad had passed away on Christmas Day. I’d known he was ill, and so I shouldn’t have been shocked, yet I was, and I still am, because the idea of Big Eddie being dead, just seems, well, absurd, not quite believable.

When Biff and I had composed ourselves, we talked about him for a while, and at one point she said, ‘My dad wasn’t all that keen on Christmas,’ at which I could only chuckle and remark, ‘Well, he’s made his bloody point now.’ For that was him; once he had taken a view about something, or someone, he was pretty much unshakeable. The big fellow liked people for what they were, not what they did, and he was firm on that. Back in the old Lanarkshire days, I introduced him to someone. Later on he told me, quietly, ‘ I didn’t take to that guy.’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Because the first thing he asked me was what I did for a living.’ I understood him; he’d known that the question hadn’t been asked out of interest, but as a valuation. That litmus test was one of many things that he taught me, and it’s something I’ve tried to carry through my own life.

He was a big man in all respects, including kindness and generosity, a footballer in his youth (that’s if you accept that goalkeepers are footballers, as I’d say to him) and a short-swing, big-hitting golfer once those years were over. For all his size he was quiet, and deep, as was his sense of humour, but once you triggered it, he enjoyed a laugh as well as any man I’ve ever known, and better than all but a very few. In my early adult years, he was my main man; when my kids were born, it was with Eddie that I wet their heads. We were good at that, the pair of us; for a period in the late sixties Eddie and Liz, and Irene and I, lived quite close to each other. We had evenings at which brandy shandies were the standard, and later on he was a fixture at major events of ours in Gullane, and often at events of other people . . . even if our tastes in alcohol had matured a little.There was something reassuring about him. I remember being at a midweek football match at the old, huge, unsafe Hampden Park. They’d let way too many people in and, it being a dark night, many others had climbed over the gate or just jumped the turnstiles, as you could in those days. The Mount Florida terracing was a major tragedy waiting to happen. If I hadn’t been with Eddie, I might have bailed out, but I was, so I didn’t. Yet totemic or not, he wasn’t dull, not ever. There were scrapes; he managed to ruin a very expensive suit once, jumping over a fence in the dark. Don’t ask!

Eventually, after not too long on the loose, he found the right woman . . . and for that matter, Liz found the right man, though Wilson’s life was tragically short. (As was Eddie’s, seventy-anything being no age at all for a guy like him.) Una gave him the stable base he always needed, smiled at his quirks and eccentricities, and made the last half of his life as happy as any man could ever want. He became a grandfather too, and there will still be an Edward in the family. He’s inherited his grandpa’s telescope, and he’ll be able to look up at the star that Biff plans to name after her dad. She’ll need to choose a big one.

Thanks, Steve, I know what you mean. If you ever check the Microsoft spell-checker, you’ll be amazed by the number of varieties of the English language it offers. Sadly, though, ‘Weegie’ is not yet among them. Thanks also for the invitation. We were in Chicago a couple of years ago, (indeed, check out my Facebook page and you’ll see some evidence) and I hope very much that it will not be our last visit. Tell me, though, are there any improvement plans for O’Hare? Weird terminal; for all its vastness, I don’t recall another with so few facilities airside.