The latest entry in AMS’s 44 Scotland Street series finds Irene raising her ugly head and wanting Bertie to spend 3 months with her in Aberdeen where she is pursuing her PhD in psychology. Catch up once again with the extended family at No 44, in this the latest instalment in the Scotland Street series.

He has received numerous awards for his writing, including the British Book Awards Author of the Year Award in 2004 and a CBE for service to literature in 2007. He is dismayed that he will be absent from his friends, schoolmates, loving grandmother, and weak-willed father, whom he adores. If the Scottish diet had become Mediterranean, then Scottish furniture had become Scandinavian – light and minimalist, consigned to its owners in flat boxes and requiring to be assembled before use – and then reassembled, once the instruction booklet had been read. Bertie doesn’t want to go but is told that he must because Irene is his mother, and she has a right to see him.Upstairs, at 44 Scotland Street, his father Stuart is powerless to stop over-bearing Irene and her determination that Bertie will travel to deepest, coldest Aberdeen on a three-month sojourn. His kilt, along with his sporran, hose, kilt pin and sgian dubh, were also in one of the drawers, protected, ineffectively, by moth-repelling balls of cedar. Domenica MacDonald cultivates a friendship with Tarquin, one of the downstairs student neighbours, and they have some stimulating conversations. At a crucial stage in life – somewhere in one’s mid-thirties – the merits of well-made shoes dawn on one, and that was what happened to Angus.

As always, many topics are mulled over or discussed: expert knowledge vs pretentiousness; the Dunbar Number of close friends; social climbers; guilt over the amount of water needed to produce coffee. Through conversations over tea and coffee we are fortunately privy to their gossip, analyses of others, doling out advice, doing crosswords and philosophizing. Nobody, apparently, wanted brown furniture any longer, as it was considered too cumbersome, not to say too dull, for contemporary tastes. Big Lou has a new romantic interest, and the handsome and narcissistic Bruce Anderson gets in over his head with some business ventures. This was a matter of regret, Angus felt, even if he himself was doing nothing to stem that particular tide of fashion.In the microcosm of 44 Scotland Street, all of life’s richness is found in the glorious goings-on of its residents. Warm hearted, humorous and always wonderfully wise, Love in the Time of Bertie offers philosophical insight as well as sartorial elegance. His career has been a varied one: for many years he was a professor of Medical Law and worked in universities in the United Kingdom and abroad. Bertie is also enrolled in an Aberdeen school, where he can't understand the Scots language used by his classmates.