Quintin Jardine's blog

Okay, I haven’t been active on the blog for the last month or so; if apologies are due, you have them. There have been several reasons for my absence; most of  them were family-related, but also I’d become just plain bored by the main issues of the day. I was tired of the constant wrangling between the partners in our so-called Westminster coalition, an enterprise that was doomed to mediocrity from day one, since the Lib Dems can’t stand the Tories, the Tories all hate Vince C able, and nobody really knows who Nick Clegg is. I didn’t care who won the French election . . . although the French people will soon be caring a great deal, I reckon. I didn’t care whether Greece left the euro, even though the only solid reason I can see for it staying in is that in supporting it Germany is weakening itself, and making it less able to dominate the rest of mainland Europe. I did and still do care about the under-capitalised Spanish banks and the toxicity they piled upon themselves by handing out 110% mortgages more or less for the asking, but there’s nothing I can do about them, other than take advantage of the improving £/€  exchange rate. I had passed my boredom threshold  with the slow lingering death of  Rangers Football Club. (It really is dead, you know. Yes, I know ten guys in blue shirts and a goalie struggled past Brechin City yesterday, but they are in no way the lineal descendants of Alan Morton, Corky Young, Bob McPhail, Jerry Dawson, Jim Baxter, et al. I’m sorry, Ally; you are a lion, but you’re working for donkeys, and  the former temple which is still your home has become a mausoleum.)

So what’s prompted me to come back? Disgust, mainly. We’re three days into the Olympics and our cancerous media seem hell bent on digging up as many knocking stories as they can manufacture. For example, last night after the England/Wales select football match at Wembley, well won by the home team,  Sky Sports News stationed a reporter and crew outside studying the time it took to leave the stadium. Yes, it takes a while to clear 90,000 punters from any venue of that size, but so what? Fact was, Sky’s ace reporter couldn’t find a single punter who was prepared to complain about it on camera. The next non-story was the loss of a set of keys to some secure areas of Wembley. Yes, it happened: last week. There was never a security risk, and all the locks have been changed, yet Sky described it as an ’embarrassing incident’. Go back three days to the first England/Wales select match. What did the Online Daily Mail (where the real pond life can be found) choose to highlight? Ryan Giggs wasn’t seen to be singing the national anthem; somehow this was transformed into and reported as a deliberate snub by all the Welsh players in the squad.

I began my working life as a journalist. I worked alongside some great reporters, all of whom had two things in common; their integrity, and the fact that they knew a genuine news story from a pile of shite. There don’t seem to be any of them left.

The feedback for Funeral Note has been astounding, so I hope that correspondents can accept this as a collective response. I thank everyone for their constructive comments. Now I must explain something. The book isn’t so much a ‘Whodunnit?’ more of a ‘Whogotdun?’, but I have played by the accepted rules. There is a very big clue, and I’m surprised that so far only Cheryl Horne has got it. (Well done, Cheryl.) Alongside there’s another way of solving the puzzle, and I’m amazed that so far nobody has got that. If there is a cliff-hanger, it’s one word. ‘Why?’

I missed this on the night, but it’s worth catching up on.

Hah! Is that so? Maybe you should consider dumping him, n the ground of lack of imagination.

Today, I’m worrying about the state of the world, because of a lady’s kindness.

Yesterday my wife and I were on a train, bound for Barcelona, when she had a coughing fit, a bad one, the kind that makes your face go puce and wonder if your lungs are coming up. And I was helpless. There was nothing I could do but hold her hand and make sure she had water to sip, when she could. The guy in the seat in front, he was pissed off , for sure. Well wouldn’t you be? There  you are, listening to Europop on your iPod, and you can hardly hear it for some bloody woman. He looked around, and had the good sense to look away again. I was not at my best, that was for sure.

Then a quiet voice, unexpectedly English, said to me, ‘Give her this. It’s lavender, and it will ease her breathing,’ as she handed me a tissue that she’d soaked from a small bottle. She was right; it worked, the paroxysm passed over and the rest of the journey was calm. We both thanked her as we all got off the train at Passeig de Gracia, but she simply smiled and went on her way. I have no idea who she was, and there isn’t a cat’s chance in Butch’s kennel that I’ll ever find out, but on the off-chance, if anyone does know a tall, slim auburn-haired lady who caught the Medio Distancia from Flaça to Barcelona yesterday morning, please put me in touch with her, as Eileen and I would like to send her something in return.

So why am I worried about the state of the world? It’s because such a simple, kind, personal gesture from one stranger to another has become such a rarity that when it happens, it’s both astonishing and moving. Would I have done something similar? Before yesterday, I’m not sure; today, I’d like to think so.  So thanks again, Ms Whoever-you-are. We need more like you.

We’re travelling back to Scotland tomorrow, exchanging 32c for around half that. Am I looking forward to it? Yes, and no.

I’ve been getting a lot of ‘OMG!’s about  the ending of Funeral Note. Next one, next year; title, in due course.

I’ve just read a piece on the BBC website by a man called Adam Gopnik, on how an author should deal with a bad review. My review of Mr Gopnik’s article is short and sweet; it would have been twice as good if it had been half as long. He may take that or he may leave it; his choice, but I’d recommend the latter, since it wasn’t written with malice in mind.

How do I deal with them? Mostly, I do not react, unless I feel that the reviewer is being personally offensive, in which case he or she will get to know about it. Reviews on Amazon are the exception to that policy; that facility offers, in my view, an open door to wannabes, egomaniacs and idiots, and they are all best left to their own devices. It’s a pity that it isn’t more carefully moderated, since there are some valid points made there and valid views expressed, but they tend to be suffocated by the dross. In basing judgements and purchase choices on Amazon reviewer ratings, it’s worth noting that they give Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, four stars out of five in book form, and four and a half in Kindle.

To any would-be reviewers among you, and indeed to any professional reviewers, remember this; however qualified to comment on someone else’s work you may believe you are, you are simply an individual with a keyboard, expressing an individual opinion. Whatever you thought of a work, that is your view and yours alone. Every  person who reads a book, whoever the author might be, will form a unique mental picture of the events described.  Some will agree with you, some won’t; do you have the right to dissuade any of them from finding out for themselves?

A trip on a Lothian Tour Bus? That’s not a bad idea; I may take you up on it.

Happy birthday our Mia, two today . . . or as she says ‘dos’.

I’ve been watching, slightly out of sequence, the second series of BBCtv’s above average drama ‘Silk‘. For me, this one was made by the performance of the brilliant Phil Davies, who seems to be in the prime of his career, and the ominous Frances Barber, who’s probably a pussy-cat at home but who does an excellent on-camera line in formidable women. It looks as if she will return in series three, but I don’t see an opening for Phil, not after the way it finished

I have only one complaint. I thought the director went a little far with the detail of Billy’s prostate investigation. It can’t have encouraged too many guys to have symptoms checked out. For those who watched it and wondered, as I did, what was the song that Billy had on his player as he went through the scan, it was ‘Puncture Repair‘, by Elbow. (Down-market Coldplay, IMO.) Appropriate.

Thanks for your good wishes. In fact the next Skinner novel is created. Sorry, my fingers didn’t bleed, not even a wee bit.

National perceptions can be so unfair. I read this first, mistakenly as ‘Australian’.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/austria/9334182/Wildlife-camera-catches-Austrian-politician-having-sex-in-forest.html

Didn’t think an Austrian would have had it in him . . . or her.

The renowned Jack House once wrote a piece for the Evening Times: ‘Elie for the Elite’. (An exaggerated claim, for my family wasn’t, but still, it was a popular perception in the Fifties.) The first nineteen Julys of my life were spent in that East Neuk village; looking back, they all seem to morph into one.

Both my parents were teachers, so we enjoyed the long holidays that were compensation for poor pay. The final school bell had barely rung before we were on the train, bound for the rented house that we knew well. ‘The Fife Coast Express’ took three hours to get there from Queen Street, until Beeching butchered it.

Every July, Elie, and its ‘suburb’ Earlsferry, turned into the west of Scotland. It was a thriving community as my young life evolved, with proper shops: two newsagents (‘Clean Andra’ and Dirty Andra’) Boullet’s bakery and tea room, and two grocers, one owned by the fearsome Miss Allison, by her side Mr Turner, a Richard Hearne lookalike, of whom tales were told. The days followed a pattern. Mornings I would golf, or pull my dad’s caddy-car; afternoons were for the beach, often huddled behind a windbreak or sheltering in a beach hut. Cinema in Earlsferry Town Hall, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, (Tuesdays and Thursdays if wet: no kidding). I grew up there, fell in love there, fell out of love there too, then back in again.

Only six years after my last July in Elie, my very young family and I moved to Gullane, where I’ve lived ever since. Scarcely a day goes by without my looking across the Firth, at Kincraig Point, where lurks MacDuff’s Cave, which gave Earlsferry its name, with its hazardous Chain Walk, and at the tiny line of the town to its right.

My cousin Annie and her husband Graeme live there now, in retirement; I can see their house with binoculars. I should visit them but something holds me back. Probably it’s all the ghosts: Miss Allison and her (as he was) ever-silent Mr Turner, Janet Gowans and Minnie Sutherland,  our landladies, John Elrick, who owned the Nineteenth Hole, my friend Kenny Crawford, but most of all, the town itself. It’s a dead place now, killed by prosperity, as most of the houses became second homes.

Ironic, is it not?  Old Jack House was right after all.

One of the great things about my job is this; I can do it anywhere:

One of the things I love about football is its infinite capacity for creating situations that are at best ironic and at worst potentially doom-laden. For example, has there ever been a better moment, in the current century at least, for  Germany and Greece to be drawn to face each other? This has the potential to be the game of the tournament; not one for the purists, but for those among us who are old enough to  remember what a good kicking match was really like, before the anonymous sissies in committee rooms in Switzerland tried to turn it into a non-contact sport. I am looking forward to it like no other, in the expectation that the Greeks will play to their strengths, of which they have only one, strength itself, and the Germans will play to theirs, i. e. reacting theatrically to the slightest touch and feigning life-threatening injury. ‘Mrs Merkel, your boys could be in for a hell of a doing!‘

One of the things I do not love about football is its governance. We’ve all heard abut Sepp Blatter, but he’s not the only lunatic running the asylum. His potential successor is right there with him. The latest piece of cynicism perpetrated by Michel Platini’s UEFA, who really could not come close to running a raffle, has been highlighted by two of the game’s most respected black players, Rio Ferdinand and Vincent Kompany. For their fans’ racist abuse of the Italian Balotelli, the Croatian FA has been fined €80,000. For displaying the name of a bookmaker on his underwear, the Danish player Bendtner has been fined €100,000 and banned for one game. The message: UEFA is more concerned about commercial issues than about racism. It will be interesting to see what penalties lie in wait for Ferdinand and Kompany for pointing this out and protesting against it.

There’s a road here in L’Escala that has become known by the Brits, and even by a few natives, as the M25. On that road, there is a bar and a bakery, combined. I passed it yesterday and saw a Union Jack flying from the apartment above. My assumption was, and still is that its display was related in some way to England’s encounter with Ukraine in Euro 2012. If that’s correct, my message to the wavers is this: if you can’t find an English flag then please remove the blue from the one you have, it’s our colour, not yours.

Nothing against your team, folks, but if they go far enough to come up against Spain, (unlikely, since that would require them to beat Italy and probably also Germany) I will be strictly neutral. God knows how our Mia’s going to line up when she’s old enough to take an interest. She’s half English, quarter Catalan and quarter Norwegian, plus, if I have anything to do with it, she will also be a Motherwell supporter.

Thanks for that. Funeral Note is bringing me many positive messages. (I trash the others, naturally.) You say that as an ex-cop you know a few Bob Skinners. I wonder, do you know any Christine McGlashans, or Danny Provans?

A pleasant evening in La Clota, enlivened by meeting Anna and Gavin from Morpeth. Hope to see you both again some time.

Lovely day in L’Escala. Our Mia came for the day, took one look at us, picked up her beach bag, and headed for the door: aged two minus six days.

So we took her there. I think she had fun. I know we did