Best of causes
I am not big on plugging other people’s books, but I’m happy to make an exception for ‘My Dog, My Friend’, a new compilation put together by Jacki Gordon and published by Hubble and Hattie, a dog-dedicated imprint that’s part of Veloce Press.
It’s a couple of years since Jacki approached me and asked if I would contribute a doggie story to her collection, the clincher being that all author royalties would be going to the Samaritans.
I don’t have a dog, but what the hell, I’m creative, so I did a small piece dedicated to the boy Canelo, the younger of my step-son’s Labradors, in Spain. He and I have a special relationship. You’ll find my story on P 102 of the finished work. Canelo’s in good company, since my felllow contributors include Fred Macaulay, Esther Rantzen, Simon Callow, Charlie Dimmock, Richard Holloway and William McIlvanney, and many others.
You’ll also find this very nice photo of my subject being walked by his Granny.
‘My Dog, My Friend’ can be found on Amazon and, as they say these days with a twist of acid, in all good book shops.
Strongly recommended, and poignant, given the charity that will benefit, that it should be published in the week of Robin Williams’ suicide.
Double doses
Done
Painful
I watched the first seven rounds of the Chris Eubank/ Nick Blackwell fight last night, but switched off for two reasons: one, an early departure, two, I didn’t want to see the brave lad Blackwell being hurt any worse than he was.
Today, he’s in a coma, and I’m not surprised. It must have been obvious to everyone except the referee andthe lad’s corner that there was a tragedy in the making, but it took the doctor to stop it.
I’ve watched boxing all my life, but I’ve never had the foreboding that I had last night.
Intemperate
Here I go off on one. I have just discovered that Oxfam are selling second-hand books, and God knows what else, on line. Well, f*ck you, Oxfam and co.; try widening your social conscience.
Once upon a time, North Berwick had a nice book shop called Readmore. Then the charity shops arrived, more than you could shake a stick at, and Readmore went out of business. The same story was told all across the land.
Not long after that I was at a dinner hosted by a Scottish Government minister. As the evening drew to a close, he asked each of us to name something we would like him to do.
I stepped up and said, ‘Yes, please regulate charity shops. Bring them under control, license them, and stop them fucking up the retail environment of every community they descend upon.’
I thought that would make me very unpopular with my fellow guests, but it didn’t. In fact heads nodded all around the table.
Music while I work
St Teresa: Beth Hart. Absolute goddess; indeed, they both are.
Tony Blackburn
How many more people will play the price for the BBC’s guilt over Jimmy Savile? A guy with half a century of popular broadcasting behind him has been axed, brutally and summarily, on the basis of what the current director general Lord Tony Hall describes as ‘my interpretation’.
Instead of lashing out at the unlikeliest of scapegoats, an individual known generally as the hardest working man in radio, Lord Hall should do the decent thing and fall symbollically on his sword. That’s my interpretation.
Scexit
Ask me where my nationality lies, when I’m in the land of my birth, and I’ll tell you I’m Scottish and proud of it. Ask me when I’m in Spain, and I might tell you that I’m a citizen of the European Union and content to be one.
The first of those feelings will never change, and not so long ago, I would say that neither would the other. This morning, I can no longer assert my continuing loyalty to Europe.
I’ve spent the last few days looking on at the Prime Minister’s posturing in Europe as he fought, no, begged more like, for a fairer deal for Britain within the EU. What did he get? He secured what an old leader of mine in the Government Information Service, now deceased, would have described as ‘a form of words’. Old Charlie’s were meant to be interpreted in a certain way, but almost invariably could be read in another, by anyone with a sharp enough mind.
Dave’s deal in Brussels cuts no ice with me I’m afraid. There’s been some tinkering with the benefit system, okay, but the notion of child benefit being paid in respect of children who are residents of another European nation is just plain ridiculous to me.
That aside, the PM’s triumph will do nothing to restrain the untrammelled inward flow of economic migrants willing to work for the minimum wage, and for less if the employer is shifty enough. I’m an Amazon customer; the last year or so has seen the introduction of a thing called Amazon Logistics, through which most of my deliveries now arrive. Amazon Logistics seems to consist of people in rental vans, never the same one twice, almost invariably with east European accents, and names to match on the cards on the lanyards around their necks. What’s their hourly rate, I wonder?
If you think that’s xenophobic, live with it. I don’t; I see it as the cost of being a good European Union member. That’s one reason why Dave got his deal; the smaller nations, any one of whom could have vetoed it, know that we play by the rules, no matter how disadvantageous they are to our indigenous work-force. We don’t have regulatory fiddles like the French. We don’t have anything as craftily insidious as the Spanish NIE system, which requires citizens of all other EU member nations to register as foreigners, before they can work, buy property or even buy a car, then imposes a bureaucratic system that makes it as difficult as possible to do so.
To be honest, I can live with that stuff, insofar as it doesn’t impact upon me: I’ve had an NIE number for over 25 years, obtained in ten minutes in the Guardia Civil office in Figueres and I’m not likely to be looking for a delivery gig with Amazon logistics. No, my concern over Europe is long term; it’s this ‘ever closer union’ from which Dave says he’s opted us out.
The way I see it; mainland Europe is moving slowly but inexorably towards becoming a single supranational entity, a collection of independent states bound together under a single constitution, with a single defence force and overarching federal laws under which everyone must live. Sound familiar?
Eventually Europe, which is already much bigger than the US or Russia in population terms, will elect a chief executive; that person, usually German, will be called ‘President’, and will be called to account by a federal European parliament with which he or she will be regularly at odds. The Prime Minister says that we won’t be apart of that, but in decades to come how easy will it be for us to resist pressure to join, and how will we be able to resist as a nation if that pressure acquires a military edge?
That’s not going to happen in my lifetime, but my grandchildren will see it, of that I’m sure. It’s not a scenario I would wish to bequeath to them.
It is said by the Remain campaign that our economic strength depends on our EU membership. Really? I look across the Atlantic and I do not see Canada being disadvantaged by not being the 51st State. I look around the world and I see nations who are already our cultural and economic partners in a thing we call the Commonwealth. Then I look at home and I see strength and talent in abundance, plus a generosity of spirit which is, frankly, being taken for a ride at this moment in time.
I’m a member of the Scottish National Party. Our strident leader says I must be a member of the EU as well, but she hasn’t asked if that’s okay with me: it isn’t Nicola. Put to the choice my first loyalty will always lie with my family and with my descendants. That’s why I’ll be voting ‘Leave’: for Rex and Mia.
Twenty-seven
Yes, I know. I’ve been away, but my excuse is the same as always: I’ve been working on a book. In this case, it’s a Skinner, number 27 in the series; the title will stay secret for now, but save for a few days editing, it’s done and about to be dusted.
Music while I work
She’s been around for 20 years, but I’d never heard of Beth Hart until I saw her on Jools Holland’s Hootenanny at New Year. But I’m catching up fast.
My Big Cousin
When I was a kid in Lanarkshire, cousins came in two sizes, Big and Wee. Until two more came along when I was aged eight and ten I had one of each, and they were both girls. My Big Cousin was three years older than I was. Thus she began as an enormous presence in my life: somehow, although time made me bigger and stronger than she was, that never diminished, even when we weren’t around each other.
I’m not saying that I looked up to her as a wee lad, for I never did, but she never looked down on me either. She was striking, as a girl and later in womanhood: people looked at her, whether they wanted to or not. She wasn’t perfect growing up, but as the elder of two daughters she was expected to set an example and that can be a tough row to hoe. Given the difference in our ages, we got through childhood as acquaintances rather than close companions, but as adults, the bond between us grew, possibly because we shared the same weaknesses, and looked out for each other as necessary. After our granny’s funeral, the pair of us went out and got hammered: it seemed the right thing to do at the time.
She had bad luck in her life; some she made for herself, but most of it befell her. There was a failed marriage, then a second that appeared to have been made if not in heaven then certainly by a dating site that specialised in matching perfectly suited couples. That ended tragically soon, and I don’t believe she ever got over it. There were tough times afterwards, but her towering personality saw her through them all, and she never lost that special edge.
She died yesterday, suddenly, and to the shock and astonishment of those of us who never thought she would. We hadn’t seen much of each other in the last couple of decades, but most recently we met for lunch at a family gathering arranged because we all had reached the stage when we only got together at funerals. We left talking about the next; it’ll never happen now in its fullest form . . . the next will be another funeral . . .but I am so, so glad that one did.
Today I’m left, thinking about her and unashamedly tearful as I articulate something I’ve never expressed before, out loud, or in the written word. I loved her, and she leaves a hole in my life bigger than any other, save one.
She bequeaths to me the mantle of seniority, unenviable, because it puts me at the head of a queue, the one we’re all in. The generation before ours, the one our grandparents made, they’re all gone, and I’m the oldest of the survivors. But because of that I’m blessed in that I have memories of her that only her younger sister can share. For example, she was a damn good golfer as a kid, and would have been a hell of a lot better if she’d bothered her arse as an adult. Also, she was blessed with a voice that was her only angelic gift. Two years on the trot, in her mid teens, she sang the lead in her school Gilbert and Sullivan production. When they did Pirates of Penzance, I heard one lady say to her pal on the way out , ‘My, that lassie, she could have been a professional.’ She was right.
I found this on YouTube just now and when I played it I was gone, lost, for the girl in it could be her: almost, because she lacks a little of the quality of my teenage cousin.
I’ve included it because I know that her greatest creation, the daughter who managed to inherit all of her strengths and none of her weaknesses, will wind up reading this blog, and she really does need to see it.
All I can say, as I crack up completely and post this, is that I hope God likes a good drink.
Another?
It’s doing to be difficult be difficult to be less popular than Sir Stephen House, but already I have reservations about his successor. I am not sure that Scotland needs another Chief Constable with no background in Scottish policing. Yet another example of the weakness of the Police Scotland concept, in my opinion.
Belief beggared
Digital stocking filler
Special Christmas offer: the Kindle version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow will be cut to £1.99, VAT included, from November 12 through to December 26. A similar discount will apply in the UK.
Unashamed campaigning
The Crime Writers’ Association has asked book lovers across the nation to nominate their favourite crime authors for the 2016 Dagger In The Library award. This is the only award that QJ has ever cared about winning. I’ve been nominated once, but I haven’t given up on it, so if anyone should care to nominate me, I’d be very pleased.
This literary prize is a unique part of the CWA Dagger Awards because the nominations are made by crime readers and are in celebration of an author’s entire body of work, not just one individual book.
I grew up near my local library in Motherwell, and I go back there to speak whenever I’m invited. For many kids like me it all strats inLibraries, and it’s libraries that make them readeres. The Dagger In The Library was introduced to give them a voice in theDagger Awards, which endeavour to showcase the best of the best in the crime genre.
To nominate you should go to
http://cwadaggers.co.uk/cwa-daggers/nominate-dagger-in-the-library/
After completing their ballot, you will be entered automatically into a prize draw to win £200 in National Book Tokens. Not only that, you will also be asked to nominate your favourite library. The winner will be awarded some great CWA Dagger prizes
too.
The sad truth is that funding cuts, and. occasionally, unsympathetic councillors threatening the future of our libraries it’s even more important than ever to support them and celebrate the service they provide communities.
Centurion
My current leisure read is Fields of Glory, a new venture by my friend Michael Jecks, master of historical fiction. It’s the first in a saga of the Hundred Years War. (A large hint that there’s plenty more to come.)
This isn’t a review; you know QJ doesn’t do those, not being presumptuous enough to tell other witers how to write. But it is a very strong recommendation; I’m half way through and it’s a cracker. War has always been messy, and Fields of Glory tells it like it must have been. Well done, Jecksie.
Should he be trusted?
A couple of quick questions about yesterday’s WADA commission report into Russian athletics.
Dick Pound, the Canadian chair of the commission is a past president of WADA. In that post he built a reputation over several years as a fanatical pursuer of alleged ‘drug cheats’. He enjoyed also a very high media profile.
- With such a background, was he the best person to put in a position that demanded an objective and unbiased approach?
- Did his commission begin its work with an assumption of guilt?
Working
Sorry for the long radio silence. Blame Bob Skinner.
Claret and granya
I couldn’t help noticing on BBC Reporting Scotland that the kids in the sports centre in Motherwell were wearing Barcelona shirts. Says it all.
Comfort and joy
There is one place, and one place alone, where every printed title on my catalogue is stored and available as a matter of principle.
It isn’t Amazon, and it isn’t Waterstone, and it isn’t WHS. No High Street bookstore has the space to stock over 40 titles, only my officially approved website, http://www.campbellreadbooks.com where every book sold is signed by me.
Christmas is coming, the turkeys are working their way through their rosaries, and festive dedications are available, on every title ordered by November 28.
Ebooks may be all the rage, but you try signing one.
