The ninth installment in Alexander McCall Smith's wildly popular series finds the residents of 44 Scotland Street living their lives and meeting their fates with the author's signature indelible wit and humour.      Having anticipated his seventh birthday for so long, Bertie Pollock now longs to be eighteen, an age at which he can avoid a "gender neutral" birthday and his overbearing, eternally pushy mother, Irene. Down the street, Angus Lordie, painter and sometime somnambulist, might just be sleepwalking into trouble with the animal welfare inspectorate over his faithful hound Cyril's drinking habit, while Matthew and Elspeth struggle to care for their triplets, contending with Danish au pairs and dubious dukes to boot. Seeming to have recovered from being dumped and his doppelganger encounter, the hopelessly narcissistic Bruce might be facing his greatest challenge in the form of a "waxologist." As ever, when fate visits 44 Scotland Street, the real fun begins. Not even Bertie, with all his life experience, could fortell that it would take the form of Sister Maria-Fiore dei Fiori di Montagna and a literary festival in Dubai.