I have just finished reading the latest book in the Scotland Street series by Alexander McCall Smith, The Unbearable Lightness of Scones. I enjoyed it very much and was glad I did as I had found the previous one, 
The World According to Bertie, somewhat tedious. Not sure why, perhaps I was tiring of the characters who seemed to spend most of their days in long drawn out conversations about the meaning of life, where were they going, what were they doing etc etc which can get a tad wearing after a while.
So wasn't sure if I was going to buy this one or not, but then of course I did. No surprise there and I found I was engaged with the characters once more. Bertie, poor precocious Bertie with the ghastly mother, joins the Scouts. Against her wishes of course as with tedious predictability Irene dismissed the whole Scouting ethos as empirical and reactionary, but for once his father puts his foot down (or rather, tells her to shut her face) and Bertie is allowed to join, complete with outfit and toggles to his delight.
The dreadful Bruce, conceited and self obsessed, seems to undergo a conversion of the soul after realizing just how empty and facile he is, Matthew, the boring dreary Matthew, marries and nearly comes to a sticky end on his honeymoon in Australia being swept away into shark infested waters and rescued by a dolphin. This episode was very witty and funny and I did wonder when reading if AMS had decided that Matthew needed a bit of a shake up. It worked.
A delightful reference to another character on page 203 of this edition that I would not have picked up or been aware of at all if I had not just discovered EF Benson:
"Angus claimed that it was the finest smoked salmon in Scotland....Domenica tried to obtain the shop's address from Archie but he had deliberately declined to give it....Thus did Lucia protect the recipe for Lobster a la Riseholme.....look what happened to Lucia; her hoarding of the recipe had driven Mapp into rifling through the recipe books in her enemy's kitchen..."
Wonderful.
As we all know, the Scotland Street books started as daily episodes in a Scottish newspaper and it seems that Alexander McCall Smith is about to repeat the experiment, this time in the Telegraph. He is giving the 
Scotland Street characters 'a rest' and perhaps he has realised that it might be a good moment to let them take a back seat for a while. But never one to rest on his laurels, AMS is now writing about a totally new set in Corduroy Street and readers can register and link up with this now. Please see the link below. I have duly done so and am looking forward to catching up on all these episodes. I gather they will also be available on a daily pod cast and AMS also wants this to be interactive with readers making suggestions of what should happen and how the characters shape up. Sounds fun.
