Dru, Steinbeck and the Book of Deer

Dear Juliet I think you're happier and I think you're getting into a good place so I'll just once again say: You were always worth it, and the thing is, I always enjoyed going to see you even if it meant standing outside for an hour in the freezing rain! I liked you as you were, not as some impossible ideal but as an actress from Hollywood who was "kind, sweet, sensible and shy." ( Dear Miss Landau ) I liked trudging around Glasgow with wet snow leaking between my toes looking for a present for you. I even liked you more than Kirk liked Spock, which is saying something. P.S. You don't need to call me Admiral, you can call me Jim . In Jimmy , Stewart mentions that someone said to him, "being famous is like being a God." I don't think you're a God, I think you are my dear Miss Landau. You mean the world to me, and that's not for sale. I remember going to Point Lobos and wishing you were there, and I remember (metaphorically speaking) steal...

Dear Juliet Something of a confessional mashup of things today! There was that good lunch with my friend from college days yesterday, leaving me later at my desk, brain unleavened with nothing much to say. Cleaved from my intellect like a penitent in Erewhon, fearful of writer's block and the boring blank page. But I think all that has happened over the last seven weeks simply caught up with me, and there's no shame in saying I needed a break to recharge for a day. I got that in the form of some emotional release. They're making a film about the life of Jimmy Stewart , specifically the time  where he flew B-24s during World War Two . Every time I see B-17s or something similar in flight, it breaks me up completely. The last time I really got emotionally caught was the Eagle landing scene in First Man . It was more the air of quiet concentration that got to me. Like NASA, staff were doing their jobs at the National Autistic Society in Glasgow without fuss, but with a profes...

Dear Juliet I had a long lunch with an old friend from college today (hence the late blog, sorry) but I've also been called into hospital to give more blood tomorrow. However, it looks like things are winding down, the course of chemo pills concludes in August and I don't think they're going totally to exsanguinate me. That said, I think I've given my pound of flesh and pint of blood. It looks like the long walks through Wolverhampton are coming to an end, and (with respect to Evelyn Waugh), a  "small red flame - a beaten-copper lamp of deplorable design relit before the beaten-copper doors of a tabernacle; the flame which the old knights saw from their tombs ... burns again." I'm unquestionably being a bit overdramatic, but the result might have been different in other days. The king, whom I briefly saw last week, doesn't actually have prostate cancer and very little has been said about the actual diagnosis , but on the basis of my very subjective gli...

Dear Juliet I lit a candle in the Lady Chapel for you. Not for the first time. I have to run out and work now (work being a four letter word), but I'll quickly add a quote from Brideshead Revisited , which I hope will please you: "There was one part of the house I had not yet visited, and I went there now. The chapel showed no ill effects of its long neglect.; the art-nouveau paint was as fresh and bright as ever; the art-nouveau lamp burned once more before the altar. I said a prayer, an ancient, newly-learned form of words, and left, turning towards the camp; and as I walked back, and the cook-house bugle sounded ahead of me, I thought: 'The builders did not know the uses to which their work would descend; they made a new house with the stones of the old castle; year by year, generation after generation, they enriched and extended it; year by year the great harvest of timber in the park grew to ripeness; until, in sudden frost, came the age of Hooper; the place was des...

Dear Juliet Bit late, sorry. Spent too long getting stuff ready for my tax return, which was fascinating. Not. No emotional upheavals at work, thankfully. Unfortunately, it's all confidential... I'm still a bit wary of going too deep, particularly at half-past-two in the morning when I have to get up later on and light a candle for you. But perhaps that's the point. That I've been lighting a candle for you for over five years. That I didn't forget about you, or think you weren't good enough. I worried about you during the Covid pandemic, thought endlessly about what I would say if I got back into the arena in front of you in Telford, got a copy of A Place Among the Dead and really had to struggle with myself not to email you when I was on Hydra while L.A. burned... Yes, I did worry about you. I'd far rather you'd been walking up cool Greek streets of white stone than smelling smoke wafting through cypress trees in the Hollywood Hills. I wish you'd s...

Dear Juliet I have to work again tonight because they're all desperate as usual. Out into rural parts of Shropshire you probably couldn't even find with Google Maps (although you can have a look for Ryton and Albrighton if you wish!) and not back until 3.00 pm or so your time. I'll pop you a note then if it's all right, and fill in for now with details of my next London trip so you won't feel unduly discommoded at the time. I hope. It's actually two trips between 15th-19th June respectively. The first is for a book launch back at Granary Square , just north of King's Cross 15th-16th June. The second for the Society of Authors' summer party in Southwark Cathedral 18th-19th June. I'd booked the one, then decided to go for it and attend the second. London hotel prices are more lethal than Daleks on the rampage so I'll actually be back in Shifnal on the 17th. Yes, I know I'm probably not being very bright, but I didn't want to have to econo...