Quintin Jardine's blog

‘Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you.’

Marsha Norman

. . . in that case I’ll try to make sure it’s never published, for the sake of those of a nervous disposition.

My letter to the Telegraph on sock puppeteering does appear in today’s edition. I’m glad I posted the full version, since they chose to emasculate it by deleting all the best bits. In the dim and distant past, when I was an editor, we never did that, but published readers views as expressed, if we judged them worthy of a burgh-wide audience. Okay, we might have corrected the odd spelling error, and omitted the customary Motherwell sign-off, ‘Yours, and oblige,’ but that was all.

‘Writing is a struggle against silence.’

Carlos Fuentes

. . . and at this moment, silence is winning

Sir

That was some hat-trick RvP scored yesterday, but it should not deflect from the truth, that until Scholes, and to an extent Rio, took hold of the game in its death throes, it was one of the worst performances by a Man U team in living memory. The only consolation is that they weren’t as bad as Liverpool vs Arsenal. (. . . he wrote, then sat back and waited for Paul Johnston’s furious Facebook reaction.)

I’m sorry to read that Oscar Pistorius, a real hero, has sullied his reputation by complaining about the length of his rival’s blades. I don’t really understand it either. Yohan Blake is five feet eleven inches tall. Usain Bolt is six feet five.

For those who visit my website and blog but don’t do Facebook: this deserves as wide an audience as possible.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2197294/The-author-caught-praising-books-Amazon–writing-disparaging-reviews-rivals-works.html

Most people who know me know also that I never read Amazon reviews, good or bad. This is why.

Who said that the Scottish Premier League would disappear up its own arse without Rangers? Instantly it’s more competitive, since eleven clubs now have a Champions League slot in their sights, whereas before they were both swallowed up by the Old Firm. Not only that, but Motherwell are top of the league. It will not last, probably not beyond next weekend, but let the Steelmen enjoy it while they’re there.

Enjoyed a pleasant siesta yesterday, in the garden with Brad Paisley on the Shuffle. This may cause my good friend Paul Johnston to mock me, should he read this, but I freely confess to being into Country music, and to Mr Paisley being top of my list. Yes, I know that some of his lyrics are banal and schmaltzy, but they come with the genre, and the fact that Brad is one hell of a guitar player more than makes up for them.

Historically, that is quite correct. However, in this case, the unfortunate Stevie was issued with a weapon that had been modified, the cylinder latch having been adapted to double as a trigger lock, similar to that found in the Dan Wesson BB gun.

Back in L’Escala, where we appear to have imported a modified version of the Scottish summer. We landed in Girona last night to the first rain in living memory and woke this morning to find a Tramuntana (local lingo for gale out of the north) blowing.

Doesn’t matter. Nothing will ruin my lovely wife’s birthday.

The son of a friend of mine once caddied for Clint Eastwood when he came to East Lothian to play some golf. He said he was a nice guy. I’m sure he’s all that, as well as being possibly the mot successful actor directors ever.

That’s why I’m going to give him the of the doubt by assuming that when he stood up and said that the Republican Party owns America, he was only acting, replaying the part of the old geezer in Gran Torino.

I don’t say this to upset any American friends, only to point out that if he did mean it he was fundamentally wrong. History is littered with horror stories of one party states,  and your nation has a fine record when it comes to opposing them.

New Yorkers in Texas are like haemorrhoids. When they show up for a little while, folks don’t like ’em very much. But when they come down, hang out and stay there, then they’re a real pain in the ass.

Thanks Jeffrey, I know you mean well, but . . .

Funeral Note isn’t a cliff-hanger: it ends with a question, unspoken, but a question nonetheless. And the answer is there. Most readers have worked it out; it just takes a little observation and reasoning.

As for your other comment, I have to tell you that the day I find myself giving a fuck about an Amazon review will be the day I give up writing. Those things are so infiltrated by sock puppets and idiots that they have lost all credibility. In any event, if the unvalidated opinions of total strangers, (even if they are real people, which is not always the case)  discourage an individual from choosing a book or buying a piece of music, that person is seriously lacking a mind of his or her own.

Thanks John, and good luck with the book. Let me know when you get a deal; I look forward to reading it.

Last night I caught up on back episodes of one of my favourite cop shows, Blue Bloods. Please don’t hold that against me. I know it’s formulaic, PC, (even  though in Series 2 they apear to have cut down on the praying round the family dinner table) and as the new Mayor said to Frank in Series 2 Ep 1, ‘A hold-over from the 20th century’, but I like it, okay? It is also instructional.

In one episode I noticed, for the first time, although I suspect it’s always been there, the sign on Frank’s daughter’s desk. It reads ‘Erin Reagan-Boyle, Esq’. Because  ‘Esquire’ is a Western European designation applicable to men only, and because Erin is quite evidently a woman, at first I thought that either the production team had been sloppy, or that political correctness in the US had gone beyond madness. Then I looked it up and discovered that in the US the suffix ‘esq.’ designates individuals entitled to practice law, and may be used by both men and women. Where the hell did that one come from, I wonder?

Those were our Mia’s first observed words in English . . . apart from ‘Woof woof’ which doesn’t really count as it’s Dog. They came to mind  this morning when I went on Facebook and found a post from another writer. It asked me, and the other 800+ people on her Friends list to vote for her in the current on-line poll for the ITV3 Bestseller Dagger award.

Letting your close friends and family know you’re up for an award, that’s one thing, but using Facebook, well, that doesn’t sit quite right with me; that’s what politicians do, not authors. So I’ve voted for Kathy Reichs instead, on the basis that she’s also a Facebook Friend, but she didn’t ask for my support. I’ll probably have one less Friend as a result, but I can live with that.

What a question. How do I have such a handle on the female psyche? I don’t; just ask my wife. If you think you do, beware; any such belief or assumption can land you in deeper shit than you could ever imagine.

I’m grateful to Patricia Wright, a regular correspondent from Arizona, for alerting me to the aftermath of the notorious sex abuse case brought against a former college football coach, Jerry Sandusky. The case itself made international headlines with his conviction, but what followed has  slipped under the radar outside the US. Wikipedia may be a dodgy witness at times, but the following piece is very well sourced, and explains it all in detail.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_State_child_sex_abuse_scandal#NCAA_and_Big_Ten_sanctions

I’m with college football’s ruling body in fining the university involved, but I’m still trying to get my head round the logic in ‘vacating’ the results of 111 football games. Punish the guilty and those who covered up his actions, by all means, but how can it be right or fair to extend that sanction to take in the players involved, who were at best innocent parties, and at worst, potential victims? I can’t work it out, can you?

Further to my last post, I’ve just read, and shared on Facebook, an article about a guy in Oklahoma who ran an online business that posted positive book reviews on Amazon and elsewhere for money, and made tons of it doing so. There are US Federal guidelines against phoney reviewing, but clearly they don’t work. The internet is all too easy to abuse, but governments do very little to protect it. Time they did, by making such activities illegal, globally, with penalties up to and including jail time for offenders.