Date Published: 24th August 2024

Friends: This picture was taken by my daughter, Lucy, and she has now put it on a birthday card. It shows me with the antenna for the radio I have at our house in the Highlands of Scotland. I fire it up from time to time (I am a licensed radio operator, as it happens!) in the hope of speaking to somebody, but I very rarely get any response. Atmospheric conditions and mountains, I suppose. The inscription on the card reads: Is anybody out there?

Today is my birthday (hence the card) and the sun is shining in Edinburgh (at least for the moment – our weather changes by the minute in these latitudes). I am spending the day with family, and have just opened my presents: they include a striped shirt; a small portable speaker; a cordless screwdriver; an adjustable cork for bottles; a book; a battery-powered reading light; a notebook. I am very fortunate.

But those are just things. What counts for all of us, I think, is friendship, and the knowledge that there are friends to whom we can turn. And these friends may sometimes not be exactly visible, but are still there. Mma Ramotswe, Mma Makutsi, Mr J.L.B. Matekoni; Isabel Dalhousie; and, of course, Bertie. These are friends whom you and I share. I shall have a metaphorical cup of tea with them later on, and we shall talk a bit about life, and such other subjects as suggest themselves. And after that, I shall return to my desk and carry on writing. I have started a new Professor von Igelfeld book. And I am also starting a new volume in the Scotland Street series. Irene is in Aberdeen, with her new fisherman friend; Bertie and Ranald Braveheart Macpherson are planning a trip to Glasgow; Big Lou is serving coffee in her coffee bar. It’s all happening – just beyond the very thin veil that separates us from where we are and the place where, with a little luck, we might imagine ourselves to be.