Stuart’s Plague-Times Naughty Newsletter Number The Thirteenth
Up-To-Date Productions Ltd., in partnership with Finished-Archiving-These-Things & Son, are proud to present: an up-to-date newsletter!
And with that, dear Newsletterists, we have caught up with the sendy-out portion of the Newsletter backlog. This one went out in April 2024, and from here on in, things will be all new, all of the time! Well, occasionally, anyway. When I have something interesting to say.* Or something shiny catches my eye…
So, with as much further ado as you can stuff down the back of the fridge, here’s the up-to-date newsletter:
*Note: that’s something interesting from my point of view, it may well have no relevance or interest to you whatsoever. I make no promises.
Stuart’s Plague-Times Naughty Newsletter Number The Thirteenth
Welcome, dear newsletterists! Pull up a chair* and rest those weary bones of yours, for this is the inaugural newsletter of 2024, and we have things to discuss. Well, not so much “discuss”, I suppose – it’s more a case of me rambling on for a bit about stuff and things, while you drink a nice cup of tea and munch your way through a nice biscuit.**
I suppose, as this is Newsletter Number The Thirteenth we should fear that it’ll be unlucky for some. A witchy newsletting experience for the God-fearing folk of the interwebs. Ooooh, spooky!
Or something.
Not sure I completely thought this metaphor through before I embarked upon it, like a very small bear in a red hat, duffel coat, and a wee cardboard tag around my neck saying: “Please Take Care Of This Writer”. But more of that later.
Anyway, this is the newsletter we have before us, so we’ll just have to gird our loins and get on with it. Not make eye-contact. And hope we get to the other side before anyone notices.
So without further ado, Ladies, Gentlemen, and Those Who Haven’t Declared For One Side Or The Other, I present to you:
* Not that one, it’s got Onion sitting on it, and he might bite your bum if you stick it on him, because he’s funny like that and your bottom may well look delicious to him. Most things seem to…
** Today I’m recommending a Custard Cream. Not the most exciting biscuit in the world – not as flash as a Penguin or a Tunnock’s Tasty Caramel Wafer – but a dependable one. The kind of biscuit that’s got your back, when times are tough. If you accidentally killed someone, the humble Custard Cream is the kind of biscuit that’ll help you bury the body and set fire to the evidence. A Wagon Wheel might seem more thrilling, but would stab you in the back as soon as look at you.***
*** Well, don’t blame me, you’re the one who decided to subscribe to this nonsense.
ITEM NUMBER THE FIRST: In Which Gherkin Pickle-Pie Kitten Cat Is Still With Us
That might seem like an odd thing to say. Certainly an odd thing to kick a newsletter off with. But it remains a happy truth, so I’m going with it.
As you will see from a previous instalment of this here exciting* newsletter** we had to say goodbye to Fiona’s father, Gordon. And from this instalment,*** that our luck didn’t exactly improve any before the end of the year. And it’s not got a huge amount better today, either. After I’ve finished writing this thing, I’m off to dig a grave for our lovely little hen, Petula Gordino. Who has gone to lay eggs and eat corn-on-the-cob in Chicken Heaven, with all her dear departed sisters. And she was fine just a couple of days ago…
Anyway, this isn’t helping to lighten the mood, is it?
No.
So, yes: Gherkin.
He had some horrible health scares last year – we, and the vet, thought he was a gonner on several occasions, but he has always rallied and come through purring. His latest brush with death was a mere fortnight ago, when everyone was convinced that he’d finally wrung the last out of life number nine. But I’m delighted to say that he’s bounced back. Like a weenie striped-ginger spacehopper.
I’m convinced that Gherkin has some sort of Picture of Dorian Gray thing going on. Which is excellent, because he’s a happy wee lad and we’d be very sorry to see him go.
He’s on a couple of medicinal supplements at the moment, and has decided that they’re truly scrumptious**** and so instead of getting medicated, he gets “Gherkin’s Special Treats”. Which, apparently, taste even better if Onion can see that he’s getting them while Onion isn’t.
Onion remains fiercely jealous of Gherkin, especially where his mummy is concerned. To his mind: Mummy is for loving Onion, not for loving Gherkin! ONLY ONION!!! Ooh, is that food? Onion like food. Num, num, num, num, num, num…
He’s a weird little man.
And to my knowledge, he’s never even seen Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
But I really thought that 2023 was going to be the year we lost all our little old men. Thankfully Gherkin is still going strong!
* Shut up – it is so exciting! Well, maybe not in a traditional sense – not like a Rocky, or a Tunnock’s Tea Cake – but in a cosy, familiar, and slightly fusty way. Like an old sofa in a pub. Only no one’s wet themselves on it. Or barfed. Or spilled crisps all down the crack between the seat cushion and the back. So not much like a pub sofa, really. But it’s the thought that counts.
** Stuart’s Plague-Times Naughty Newsletter Number The Eleventeenth, to be precise.
*** Item Number The Third.
**** Which I’ve always thought is a rather disturbing song. There’s something a bit … cannibalistic about it. But then there’s quite a lot of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang that reveals itself as demented and deranged if you look too closely at it. No wonder my generation grew up weird and traumatised. It’s all this stuff, chucked at us when we were little.
ITEM NUMBER THE SECOND: In Which Our Bearded Protagonist Does Has A Thing To Share That You May Or May Not Be Interested In
There comes a time in every book’s life, where it must stop running around the house naked, put its jacket on, and sally forth into the big wide world.
Now, you might think that this is a strange thing – “Why do books only have jackets, Stuart?” I hear you ask. “Why don’t they have socks and pants and trousers and some sort of vest? Maybe a jumper, or a fetching cardigan?”* And I would have to answer that that’s a really good question. Why do books spudge about the place wearing nothing underneath their jackets? Like mini, papery perverts.
It's one of the mysteries of our age, that.
However, we have before us a book that is at least outwardly dressed, if inwardly naked: In a Place of Darkness is now officially all dressed-up and ready to go a-perverting. Are you ready:
Ta-daaaa!
I like it. It’s got both whoomph and thingummy. It’s been a while since I’ve had a cover that I’ve liked right off the bat, and it’s nice to have something that isn’t just stock photography with a figure in the middle distance, standing with its back to the camera.
Honestly, I go into the bookshop and 90% of crime novels all look Exactly The Same™. Every now and then, someone will have a bash at innovating, and before you know it everyone’s doing the same thing, and they all look the same again.
But, for a brief, wee, lovely moment, I think this is going to stand out on the shelves as something exciting and different. Even if it contains some very rude words, at least one scene depicting gratuitous nudity, and a man whose fighting suit smells like his nan’s front room.
Oh, I’m such a tease with these little details! But I don’t want to reveal too much, because that might spoil things and I don’t like things being spoiled.
The only thing I can tell you about the book, is that it features a small terrier called “Wee Hamish”, who is, of course, a homage to the lovely M.C. Beaton. Oh, and a murder. Or two. Well, quite a few murders, if I’m being honest. None of which involve a candlestick, a vicar, or a library.
Promise…
* Which is, of course, a trick question. There is no such thing as a “fetching” cardigan. They all look like someone sacrificed a perfectly good jumper to Satan, and that’s what he gave them back. And don’t give me any of your nonsense about Paul Michael Glaser from Starsky and Hutch having a ruggedly manly cardigan. It still looks as if he’s wearing a malformed blanket with sleeves. If you could knit a sleeping bag, it wouldn’t be far off it.**
** Did you know that Paul Michael Glaser is 81? I didn’t, until I looked up how to spell his name on the internet. I always thought his last name was Glazier. As in someone who glazes things. With glass. But it’s Glaser, like laser, only with a “G” at the front. And to be honest, he looks pretty good for a man in his eighties. You’d think all that sliding across the bonnet of his car would be murder on the lumbago, but here we are.***
*** Incidentally, did you know that in addition to being 81, he had a solo song in Fiddler on the Roof? It was called “Any Day Now” and they cut it from the final film. Presumably because it’s crap. I mean, I’ve heard it, and can confirm that it’s dreadful, but that might not have been the reason they cut it. But I don’t think it’s Mr Glaser’s fault – a poopy song is a poopy song is a poopy song. You can’t polish a turd, after all.****
**** Though, if you froze it, then coated it in some sort of varnish or liquid polymer, you probably could. But who would want to display a shiny jobbie in their home?
ITEM NUMBER THE THIRD: In Which There Is An Absence At Casa MacBride
Although it might seem like a long time ago, the last episode of this whimsical missive contained a lie by omission. Well, it was ramping up to the festive period, featuring Christmas trees and the like. We didn’t want to bring everyone down with the sad news that we had to say goodbye to our oldest boy, Jasper.
Jasper became a MacBride way back in 1998, when he arrived over from Ireland with a questionable passport at six years old. Well, we say “six years old”, but at that time every horse coming over from Ireland was six. Every single one. What a coincidence. And not suspicious at all.
So he could’ve been anything up to nine at that point. And he was our braw wee man for twenty-seven years.
Jasper was a very couthy horse who loved his grub. Every time Fiona would appear with the evening feed, he’d hang out over his stable door and go “ho-ho-ho-ho-ho…” like some sort of equine Sid James.
He wasn’t above a little petty larceny, either. Once, at a competition, a woman came up to tell him what a handsome chap he was, and Jasper, being Jasper batted his eyelashes and pricked his ears forwards … then stole the tomato-and-cheese roll right out of her hand and wolfed it down.*
Here, you can see him sporting a slightly less-than-professional haircut as supplied by his dad. Who is me. Which is why it gets a little eccentric halfway down his neck. What you can’t see in this photo, is that never having clipped a horse before, I was halfway through de-hairifying his rump when Fiona noticed what I was doing and stopped me. Resulting in what thereafter became known as a “Go-Jasper Stripe”.**
Over the years, Jasper went everywhere, loved going places, thought deer were INCREDIBLY INTERESTING – “Hoy, fella! Where’d ye get that hat? I want a hat like that, with all the pointy bits and Jaysus! Right so.”**** – and was always well behaved for his dad. Which is important. In my humble opinion.
By the time we had to say farewell to the little chap, he was somewhere between 36 and 39 years old, which is sort of 90 to 98 in people years. That was a horrible day…
Anyway, I just wanted you to know that he was here and that he was loved, and is missed every day.
* I suppose that, technically, he horsed it down.
** Jasper didn’t think he looked silly with a shaven stripe across his bum, because he was the kind of horse that could carry off a number of looks with aplomb.***
*** In an act of delayed revenge, Fiona committed a return tonsorial horror, as detailed in Item Number The Fifth.
**** It helps if you read that in a culturally insensitive Irish accent, though don’t start saying things like “begorra”, because Irish people don’t like that. And we like Irish people.
ITEM NUMBER THE FOURTH: In Which Our Bearded Protagonist Does Has Set Up An Substack
“What the hell does that mean?” I hear you mutter, into your toast and butter, heart aflutter while you cough and splutter, as if I’m a nutter who’s uttered a gutter stutter in a house of clutter. Well, I’ll tell you: a “Substack” is for when you have a load of submarines and need to put them somewhere. Or perhaps it’s something that you stack under something else? Or something you put under a stack of something elses? It’s quite confusing, really.
All I know is that if you head over to StuartMacBride.substack.com you can sign up for newsletter stuff.
“Why would I do that?” You demand, in the sand, with your hand full of contraband.* “We already subscribe to this nonsense. Why would we want any more nonsense? THERE’S ALREADY TOO MUCH NONSENSE!!!”
And you’re probably right.**
If your inbox is anything like mine, it’s full of emails that you’re sure you’ll get around to answering at some point, because you don’t want to be rude, and you can still sort-of remember what you’d been talking about, even though the email is from 2013 and the person you were emailing has probably been fired, or moved, or turned into a cactus by now. And all the marketing bumf you’re subjected to every time you buy something from someone.
I bought a nice coat for my wife, from Bravissimo, about six years ago, and they still send me emails full of ladies in their bras and pants. As if I, a married man, would be interested in such things!
Or Amazon, telling me that because I bought a large air-fryer-oven thing last week, clearly I’d like to buy another one this week. You know, what with them being disposable, single-use and everything….
But I digress.
I’m having a bash at Substacking, because that’s what hep young writer things are supposed to do these days. Plus it takes a chunk of work off Julia’s shoulders.*** Or it would if I moved everything over there. Which I may do. Or might not do. Who can tell? I’m just a wild-and-crazy kinda guy!
First I shall fill it up with the archive of newslettery things, after which I’m toying with the idea of serialising a couple of the older short stories what I has written. For some reason, the only people who ask me to write short stories for them these days is the Italian newspaper, Corriere della sera, who get a new one (in Italian) every year. And it’s a bit of a shame they never get read in the rest of the world. Or English.
Any way, it’s free to sign up, so feel … free. Or not. It’s your choice. I’m not the boss of you!
Since I started putting all these newsletters into Substack, I’ve learned how to switch off that bloody “PLEDGE YOUR SUPPORT AND PROMISE TO SEND STUART MONEY IF HE WANTS IT!” bollocks. The newsletter is, and will remain, free.
And you can skip most of the sign-up bits (they usually hide the link at the bottom), so don’t worry about being dragged into the Substacky abyss!
* Could’ve been worse, I could’ve rhymed that one with “gland”. And we all know where that would’ve led!
** And if it’s any consolation, you’re not alone. Currently there are 32,000 poor souls who’ve signed up to have their inboxes befouled by my ramblings every time one of these things goes out. That’s a lot of electronic mail. Worse, that’s a lot of electronic stamps. And each one of them has to be licked on the back of the head, before it’ll stick. No wonder Julia’s tongue-tied.
*** For the new people, Julia is the poor sod who has to format all this guff of mine from a big long Word document into the Transworld newsletter email package thing.
ITEM NUMBER THE FIFTH: In Which Revenge Is A Dish Best Served Hairy
You might not know this, but I cut my own hair.* I started doing it years and years ago, when I was doing research for The Missing And The Dead, spending lots of time with the officers of B Division.** Now, you might have noticed that a lot of police officers have the self-same haircut – a sort of short back and sides and top. There’s a reason for that. A hell of a lot of them cut their own hair, and it’s easier to adopt a one-length-fits all approach with a pair of clippers than it is to bollocks about with feathering and fades and all the rest of that tonsorial malarkey.
You go down to Asda and you get yourself a pair of clippers, on sale for a tenner, and save yourself a fortune in the barber’s chair. Because, lets face it, as a society we pay our police officers about as well as we do our nurses, teachers, doctors, dentists, and members of the armed forces. Which means saving a few bob by never having to pay for a haircut again can be an attractive proposition. Even if one does end up looking like a cross between a kiwi fruit and a potato.
I do, anyway.
But not this time.
Noooooooo…
Because Fiona lent a hand during the haircutting, yesterday. Which she does from time to time – tidying up the back of my head, as although I can reach that bit with the trimmers, I can’t actually see what I’m doing. So: Fiona To The Rescue!
Only this time, after doing the tufty neck bits, she decided there was a lumpy bit at the back that I’d missed. So she would just take care of that for me.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…
And then her eyes went wide. And her mouth puckered like a chicken’s bum. And that was the moment I realised something unfortunate had just occurred. Especially when she swiftly informed me that it would grow back in a week or two, and it was OK, because Zoom calls only see the front of your head, and would I like a cup of tea, and bye… As she scurried off, giggling.
Which is when I remembered the occasion of the “Go-Jasper Stripe”. This … vicious attack on my manly locks was clearly revenge!
The iniquity of the woman, to have waited a decade for my defences to drop – and then she struck!
So, the back of my head now looks as if I’ve tried for a reverse Mohican. Or have contracted some weird rectangular type of male pattern baldness.
And no, you can’t have a photograph, you MONSTERS!
* Actually, if you’ve ever seen a photo of me, you could probably guess, but I’m not going to dwell on that.
** Which used to be part of Grampian Police, then was B Division for a bit, before being reabsorbed into NE Division, which is essentially Grampian Police again, only you’re not allowed to call it that, or you get your wrists slapped. There is no Grampian Police, there is only Police Scotland (which I aways hear in my head like Sigourney Weaver’s line from Ghostbusters).
ITEM NUMBER THE LAST: In Which Stuart Does Recommend Other People’s Books For A Change (Again9)
This season, I are been mostly “Reading Autobiographies”. I go through phases like that, for some reason. A chunk of one kind of thing, then a more general splurge, then a chunk of a different kind of thing. Like a cannibalistic serial killer.* Would I recommend them? Hmm…
Not sure, to be honest.
Which isn’t much of a recommendation.
Each one left a slightly disappointing, bitter taste behind. As if the lives they’d led were tarnished by the person writing about themselves. That sourness that creeps in when some people have an uninterrupted platform to talk about themselves and All The People Who’ve Ever Done Them Wrong!
So let us, instead, focus on something I did enjoy:
* Which brings us back to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang again, doesn’t it. And all the other drug-fuelled weirdo children’s films and TV shows they threw our way. Not to mention the public service adverts! Let’s not get started on those…
THE MERCY CHAIR, by M.W. Craven – a police thriller featuring Washington Poe and his civilian sidekick, Bradshaw. A tattooed man is found stoned to death, tied to a tree in the wilds near Carlisle. Well, near-ish. Nearer than I live, anyway. Swiftly identified as the leader of a local religious order, the past soon disgorges secrets and bodies and lies and danger. Can Poe defeat his foe without losing everything he holds dear? Including his life…
This is a most enjoyable romp through a part of the UK that I don’t often read about – which is a plus for me. We have colourful characters by the bucketful, a lot of fun, jeopardy, and riddles, buckets of twists, and a nice juicy finale to get your teeth into.
I read this in a couple of sittings, which is a hell of a lot more than I can say for those autobiographies. So give it a go when it gets published in June.
A BEAR CALLED PADDINGTON, by the wonderful Michael Bond. If you don’t own a copy of this book, there is something fundamental missing from your life, and you should rectify that immediately.
I first came across Paddington, not through the books, but the FilmFair TV series, way back in seventies. Where it was all done in stop motion, only the sets were cut-out illustrations, and so were all the humans. The only proper 3D character in the thing was Paddington himself. Which was a notion – that the talking bear, who eats marmalade sandwiches, is the only real thing in a flat world populated by 2D people. That’s your genuine subversive genius, that is.
It was only later that I discovered the books the show was based on. But I went back to them just the other week* and was immediately transported back to being a wee boy again. “Delightful” is one of those strange words that seems simultaneously camp and cuttingly sarcastic, but the Paddington stories really are delightful. They are literally full of delight. Michael Bond, like A.A. Milne, has the skill to weave tales of a little hairy bear into a basket of joy and wonder.
Fix that hole in your bookshelves (if you haven’t already got a copy – and if you do have a copy, do yourself a kindness and read it again), you will be a happier person for it.
And we could all do with a bit of that.
* It had been a stressful bastard of a week, what with the latest round of Things Are About To Go Horribly Wrong With Gherkin, plus Here’s A Massive Set Of Page Proofs That Have To Be Done Right Away, And There’s A Copyedit On Something Else Waiting For You As Soon As You’ve Finished That, Plus A VAT Return!