“Robin, I’ve just tried to get hold of Willie.”

“He’s out of the country, Tom. I got an email from him two days ago.”

“Well, I just had to tell someone this, so I phoned you up.”

“Okay?”

“Right, so I’ve just been into a pub in Broughty Ferry for my lunch and at one end of the bar was this huge soup terrine. Well, it was completely and utterly empty, not a drop of soup in it, and it had a ladle sticking out of it and that didn’t have a drop in it either, and there were no soup bowls, no spoons anywhere near it. Anyway, the barman saw me having a look at it and came up to me and asked if he could help me.

“Got anything to eat, mate?” I asked.

He picked up the lid off the terrine and said, “How about some of the Emperor’s New Soup?”

Good one, isn’t it?!

‘Who greased the viiiiiiiiiiiiiiine?’ (and you say that with your voice faded off into nothing.)

I was brought up at a time when the two main Scottish ski resorts, Aviemore and Glenshee, used to enjoy decent seasons, and because the latter was only just over an hour away from my home, I was up there nearly every weekend in the winter. Consequently, I sort of became an ‘above-average’ skier – well, in Scotland anyway. At the peak of my ability, I built up enough courage to ‘shuss’ one of the ‘difficult to intermediate’ slopes at Glenshee and I remember quite distinctly, as I tore down the piste with my legs juddering like shock absorbers and my eyeballs vibrating in their sockets, that my brain was screaming out, ‘I’m gonna diiiiiiiee!’ (again, voice fading away to nothing.)

Now, I reckon I probably reached a quite staggering 30 mph on that gentle run, so it is quite mind-boggling to me that a determined slip of a girl like Chemmy Alcott can launch herself off the edge of a Canadian precipice and for the next couple of minutes follow a tortuous course at 90mph, trying to keep focussed on staying upright and resisting the huge temptation to over-edge her skis and lose speed. And then there’s Amy Williams, who has the looks of a girl who might scream on a fairground merry-go-round, throwing herself onto her faithful ‘tray’, Arthur, at the top of a lethal frozen drainpipe and appearing at the other end, with her chin no more than a centimetre from the ground, in a faster time than any of the other Olympians.

It actually quite annoys me to hear the female Canadian ski commentator for the BBC saying, “And I’m afraid she really has let it go now. She is two hundredths of a second down at the last timing point. This will be a big disappointment for her because right now she really should be attacking this course, not thinking about being technically correct.” Oh yeah? Well, my dear, maybe you should think about what you say about the skiers when they’re waiting to push off from the starting gate, because that might give you a hint why there are some skiers who are ‘two hundredths of a second down.’

‘Next to come is Julia Mancuso from Squaw Valley.’

‘And here we have the French skier Ingrid Jacquemod from Val d’Isère.’

‘And here is Andrea Fischbacher from Eben in Austria.’

What do these places have in common? Yes, you’re right, they’re all ski resorts.

So let’s now try this -

‘And next up for Great Britain is Chemmy Alcott from…London?’

Or even –

‘And here she is, going into her final run in gold medal position, Great Britain’s Amy Williams from…Bath.’

You don’t have to be a mastermind to grasp the situation, do you? The cost, the hardship, the dedication that these girls and other members of the British team have had to take on outclasses by far the achievement of those who simply have had to walk out of the back door of their houses, strap on their skis and head off down the slopes. But, of course, it doesn’t win them medals, does it?

And then, a month ago, another hefty spanner was thrown into the already creaking and grinding works when the British Ski and Snowsport Federation, the governing body of the Winter Olympic team, went into administration, and it is rumoured that many of the athletes have had no option other than to fund themselves during the Games.

So, what I’m wondering in a way is why do we bother casting hugely expensive telephone votes for pretty mediocre artists on TV programmes like ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ when we already have true talent which happens to be in real and deserved need of funding? I would much rather watch Chemmy Alcott or Amy Williams walking onto the stage in front of Simon Cowell and his cronies and just standing there, smiling at them.

‘And what do you do?” he would ask.

Chemmy/Amy would turn to a huge split screen behind them and simply say, ‘This’. The phones would be ringing long before the final image of Chemmy collapsing exhausted at the end of her run, sliding the last twenty yards into the inflated safety barrier, or Amy jumping up from skeletal Arthur – the other ‘man’ in her life – in celebration of the first British Women’s Winter Olympic Gold for 58 years.

I really mean it, girls, to you both and all your fellow team members – huge respect.

I won’t go into huge details about it all, but it has to be one of the most enthralling weeks I have ever spent. The kids in the orphanage, aged between 10 and 16, were there because of HIV, sectarian violence and general poverty. Peter and Frederick had both witnessed their parents killed in front of them, and Frederick, aged 14, was still traumatized by it. Doreen and Anne had lost mothers to AIDS and Anne was HIV positive herself, but being treated. Fridah, aged 10, was brought in by the police two years ago. She has no memory of where she came from or who her parents were. Yet, together, these children, 14 boys and 10 girls, formed one of the strongest units I have ever witnessed, supportive of each other and loving to those younger members. And never, for one moment, was there a smile off their faces.

The credit for this has to go to Mrs. Esther Mwiti who started the orphanage in 2002 and continues to fund it out of her own pocket. She is a remarkable woman with a deep faith and enormous energy, even though she had suffered a life-threatening illness not so many years ago. And she has been clever enough to surround herself with some quite remarkable people to help – Grace, the project administrator; Joseph, the scout leader and ex-international marathon runner; Peter, the church deacon, who leads some pretty raucous services with a good bit of ecclesiastical rhythm in his own movements.

We walked with the kids most mornings to their primary school about 4 kms away, and were joined on the way by a fair amount of the 630 pupils. The Kenyan government granted free primary school education after the last election, a magnanimous gesture but one that has proven totally impractical, as schools designed to cope with 200 have had to stretch their walls to cope with more than double that amount. Mia Moja was no exception. Class sizes were 40-50, children squeezed into desks, their writing hands the only thing they could move, and yet you could tell by just looking at their faces that they were there to learn.

A couple of observations:

• The 10-year-olds were learning exactly what our 10-year-olds would have been learning.
• They would have come to school in the first instance only speaking in their mother tongue. They would have had to learn English and Swahili in their first two years.
• They loved singing so I taught them the song ‘Michael row the boat ashore’. In explaining the song, I asked them which river Jesus was baptised in. Every hand in the class went up. I wasn’t really aiming to go on this line of questioning, but I thought I’d just seen how far I could go with it. So I asked who baptised him. The answer was immediate. What relation was John the Baptist to Jesus? They knew that as well. And they learned the song in fifteen minutes.
• Back here in Scotland, I’ve just today given a talk at the local primary school for their Book Week. I told this story to the head teacher and she said that there was no way any of her children would have known the answers to those questions. It makes one wonder a bit, doesn’t it?

But I’m afraid that was not to be. As I suspected, the chemist shook his head slowly and said with a comforting smile,” I think the best thing would be for you to pop in to see your doctor.”

“Yes, I’ll just do that,” the woman replied but, in honesty, she could barely disguise her exasperation. You see, ‘popping’ to see the doctor was going to entail her fixing up an appointment, which could well be in a couple of days, get someone to look after the granddaughter, walk to get a bus, change buses to get to the surgery, travel all the way back again, pick up prescription at the chemist, get her granddaughter and walk home. There was no ‘popping’ involved. This was a drudge, a slog, and a huge disruption to her day.

The inference of the young chemist was that ‘popping’ was not going to be any bother, that it might be rather light-hearted and fun, maybe do a bit more ‘popping’ on the way, like going to the cinema or having a cup of coffee with a friend. Why couldn’t he just have said, “I know it’s going to be a crashing bore for you and you’ll probably feel like killing me for saying it, but I think you’ll have to see the doctor?”

I’ve been on the receiving end of it too, usually from one of those swish, all glass-fronted car dealerships with whom I’ve just had my car serviced at vast expense, only to get it back to find that something is not working in the car that was never not working when I took it in. “Ah, right, we’ll see to that,” says the service manager in the dark suit, white shirt and tie, who has never stuck his lily-white hand anywhere near the innards of an automobile and therefore has no knowledge as to whether it really can be ‘seen to’. “The best bet then would be if you could just pop it back to us again.”

“Of course I’ll do that,” I reply jauntily, longing to pop, but not really taking into account that it happens to be a 55-mile round trip to the garage, that I managed to coincide the last service with a meeting in town, that my appointment diary is full for the next week, and that precious, expensive fuel will be flowing through my car engine on the way there and back again. “Thank you, I’ll look forward to seeing you again,” I say before hanging up the phone and bursting into tears.

Bank managers use it too. “Good morning, Mr. Pilcher,” says the voice on the phone. “Could you just maybe pop in to see me when you’re passing?” Why can’t they be honest and say, “Come by the office, your overdraft is excessive and I want to flay you alive.”

So I suggest we keep the word ‘pop’ to champagne bottles, good-fun grandfathers, bursting balloons, top-of-the-…, and double barrelled cork guns. Hey, I wonder if you can still get those?

Willie Robertson’s first book On the Milk came out at the beginning of October last year. Being written about a young lad’s adolescent years in Dundee at a time when the town was in industrial decline, it was thought the book might be a bit limited in its appeal. The reality was quite the opposite. Demand was such that the book sold out completely. Just before Christmas, no book retailer, not even Amazon had a copy. So what do the publishers do? They say ‘sorry about this, but you’re going to have to wait until June now when the paperback comes out.’

Now, I’m sure the publisher has a first rate explanation for all this, but to me, it seems to fly in the face of all good marketing practice. If a supermarket sells out of, say, potatoes, they go out to buy more – immediately, from whatever source possible – because they know that potatoes are selling and they want to cash in on their popularity. They certainly wouldn’t put up a notice saying to their customers that they were going to have to wait until the next growing season before they are able to buy more. In the intervening period, customers would simply have to learn to do without potatoes or, more likely, find an alternative. Once the new batch of potatoes come in, then the market will have declined and a vastly expensive ‘product confidence’ programme would have to be initiated to restore interest in the potatoes. Then, at this stage, after financial evaluation, some might say, ‘Actually, what’s the point?’

I’m sure it’s very frustrating for Willie Robertson to understand this, especially when Amazon are putting up the message ‘We are no longer able to offer this item for sale. Our supplier has informed us that this item has been discontinued and is no longer available.’ There is no mention of the reason for it not being offered for sale (ie. it’s actually sold out!) nor does it mention that, in five months’ time, the book will be available in paperback.

I suppose it all boils down to priority, and that the reprint of the memoirs of a past celebrity who has just mastered the basic art of ice dancing on television would satisfy the present literary market more than Willie Robertson’s extremely funny and nostalgic social commentary.

Dammit, I was being quite objective up until that moment!

Anyway, I’ve always been a fan of Chris Evans, even when he lost the plot and got fired by Radio 1, as it was that rather undisciplined episode in his life that helped to sell my wife’s business. Kirsty had run Pedlars, a slightly eccentric clothing company, for about eight years, bravely building it up after a pretty scary run-in with breast cancer. The hallmark of the range were Pedlars themselves (first known to the world as Tinkers), trousers that were made up of four different fabric panels – tartan, leopard skin, floral, checked. They caught the imagination of both young and old during the ‘90’s and became pretty much cult wear.

And so it was that our great marketing campaign was to send out a free pair of trousers to any celebrity whom we thought mad enough to wear them. The trouble was that the trousers themselves were so bizarre that none of our chosen few were quite mad enough to wear them outside their own houses.

That was until the day Chris Evans got fired by Radio 1. There he was, on prime time news, getting into a car, flashing a distinct leopard and tartan leg to the thronging paparazzi. That wasn’t enough to get Pedlars immediate recognition, but thankfully, the young man obviously went home and drowned his many sorrows without getting undressed, and the next day was seen at Heathrow airport, enveloped ‘neath the caring arm of Virgin boss, Sir Richard Branson, and the trousers were splashed across the front page of every national newspaper. (I’ve still got a copy of the photo, but I don’t think I’d better post it up in case I contravene some copyright law.)

Thus, the word went out from Fleet Street, ‘Who makes those trousers?’ And the next day, Kirsty and I were sitting in the Pedlars office on our farm in Scotland with five or six newspapermen flashing photographic bulbs in her face and quizzing her about the business.

After about an hour of this, they closed their notebooks and said, “Thanks for that. Is there anything else you want to say?”

And I said, “Yes, she wants to sell the business.”

The journalists – and Kirsty looked at me, aghast. “What?”

“There’ll never be a better opportunity,” I said out the side of my mouth to her.” You’re going to get free advertising.”

TOO GOOD BOSS DECIDES TO SELL BUSINESS was the best of the many headlines in the newspapers the next day. Pedlars was sold within two months.

So, Terry, my good fellow, have that well-earned lie-in and maybe I’ll tune in on Saturday morning. But in the meantime, you keep rockin’ on, young Christopher.

So apologies for being out of touch for SO long, and a very Happy New Year to everyone. We’ve been in Scotland for Christmas and the weather has been perfect – completely Christmas card-like. I even saw a robin strutting his stuff on the handle of a spade against a snowy backdrop, so you can’t get much more authentic than that.

This next book has been long in coming and I apologize for that, but the publishers gave it a huge lead time and there’s not much one can do about that. Anyway, it’s due out in the UK in April, under the name A MATTER OF TRUST, and then a month later in the USA, under the name THE LONG WAY HOME. So don’t go ordering a copy of each off Amazon, thinking I’ve been splurging them out at breakneck speed!

Okay, I’m back. I haven’t gone overboard, AWOL or been sectioned. I’ll try to keep this going a bit more regularly.

Have a good 2010.

Shortbread, our short story website, continues to thrive and I really am amazed, and pretty gratified, at the quality of writing that has been submitted. If you haven’t discovered it yet, just click on the link at the bottom of the introduction on this page. We are probably getting about ten new stories a week and at the same time we are building up our audio library. What has been slightly disappointing is that I had envisaged established authors in supporting these talented new writers by being a Guest Editor on site, picking a number of stories and making comments on them, but I must have sent out about seven emails and never even got a reply. Maybe I’m being a bit idealistic about this, but I don’t think it’s too much to expect just to get some kind of acknowledgement, even if to say that they were far too busy writing their next tome!

We went the other day with some friends – and Ros – for a sort of pilgrimage up to Glenlyon in Perthshire. Kirsty, my wife, had spent the first seven years of her life there and Ernest Wills, the great-uncle of our friend, Richard Broadhurst, had owned Meggernie estate which was right up at the head of the glen. We stayed at the hotel in the village of Fortingall, which, believe it or not, is reputed to be the birthplace of Pontius Pilate. If you ever come to Scotland, I would suggest you try the hotel out. It is owned by the Glenlyon estate and is really beautifully run. The website is http://www.fortingall.com/ . Glenlyon itself is often described as ‘the most beautiful glen in Scotland’ and the day we went up it, one could quite easily see why. We must have had about four seasons in one day, driving rain giving away to hot sunshine and then followed by sleet and even a few flurries of snow. We were away for only 24 hours, we never left the boundaries of our county, yet it felt like the most restful week’s holiday. How lucky we are to live in such a wonderful place!

I am now off to indoctrinate Ros in the art of using a mobile phone! She says she is a technophobe, so I’m going to have my work cut out in changing her opinion!

So far, so good! I now await the opinion of the Big Man himself!

The Sierra, however, is not a simple or backward place. The people who live here are farmers, businessmen, who are as proud and as fiercely protective of where they live and work as they are about creating success for themselves in their affairs. The community spirit in the area is therefore strong and unbroken.

The town of Aracena lies 90 kilometres north-west of Sevilla on the N-433 which is the main route from Sevilla to Lisbon in Portugal. It is a main arterial route, yet it carries no more than two to three thousand vehicles a day. Until 15 years ago, the road was no more than a winding ribbon with passing places, but then EC money was pumped into a fine wide carriageway with strategically-placed overtaking lanes that cut the driving time from Sevilla to Aracena from about 3½ hours to just over 1 hour. Aracena itself was by-passed by a ring road that skirted the town to the north and, in all the time I have lived here, I have never seen a queue or even the merest hint of congestion on the road. However, because of the low volume of traffic, it is a fast road and it has been dogged with numerous fatal accidents.

Now, the powers-that-be want to improve the infrastructure of the N-433 by upgrading it to a ‘vía rápida’ and the plan is to follow the existing road as far as possible. However, when it comes to the Natural Park, they have decided in their wisdom (and with the use of a straight-edged ruler) to drive this road through a large proportion of the small, well-tended farms that surround the town, exactly those which the Natural Park was set up to protect. The plan is devastating. Hundreds, if not thousands, of protected trees will have to be swept away and houses will either be knocked down or have huge viaducts built directly above them; the ‘caminos reales’, the ancient walking tracks that have connected the small, isolated white-washed villages for centuries, will be cut through; power lines to the outlying houses will eternally be disrupted, water wells could easily cease to function; and the road is planned to go straight through the valley where the River Odiel has its source, And then, if the road is built, the traffic will grow heavier in time, and when that happens, the powers-that-be will once again step in to upgrade it to a motorway…

Of course, this has happened in so many other countries and one has to take a balance into consideration between the need for conservation and a country’s desire to drive the economy forward. However, just four kilometres to the south of Aracena, there are hills that roll ever-southward and, although beautiful, they are barren and sparsely populated. If the road has to be built, then this is the most obvious way to direct it, all the way from Sevilla to the Portuguese border. In the millennium year, there was a plan for a motorway to be built on these exact lines, but a change of government…

There is a huge local groundswell against the project. The population want to protect this area for its history and its draw on tourism. The mayor of Aracena is a good man who has the interests of his constituents and the area at heart and I’m sure he will put every bit of pressure on the various ministries to have them re-think their plans. The whole project is still at the initial study stage, but this is the only time being given to raise objections – and they have been with vehemence. One can only hope, however, that the power of the straight-edge rule does not prove to be greater than the voice of utter reason.