Dru, Steinbeck and the Book of Deer

Dear Juliet I was going to update you on my next London trip, try to be logical and competent (15th-19th June 2026, by the way); then I think I saw you'd been reading about Point Lobos again. I'd love to go back to the Point. I stayed at the Hyatt in 2023 but hung out in Monterey in 2024, took the bus down to the edge of town and walked back to Gibson beach. I saw the Carmel Mission Basilica ( founded 1771 ) over my shoulder from the bus, sloped around the old Chevron filling station and set off along California Highway 1. I remember seeing the Carmelite Monastery in the hills , and the surf on Monastery beach. And for a' that, I think I heard you singing down the wire while Dru walked quietly with me. There was some school or other further along the way, and in its grounds the remains of an old jalopy. Either used by paisanos on the farm or driven across from Oklahoma during the days of the Great Depression, in search of the land of milk and honey. I'd just seen the B...

Dear Juliet I had a not-particularly-great night last night, with too many Jelly Babies and too little concentration on Star Trek IV and my co-ordination. I feel a little frowzy this morning although I never get a hangover. In fact, it looks like I inherited my father's allergy to alcohol. I can't actually drink much or my liver starts telling me "the engines cannae take it" , as Scotty would say. I've got to do five calls tonight, and am considering crying in a layby. So I just thought I'd mention I'm not perfect either. I eat too many biscuits and I don't want to take exercise any more. I've made plenty of mistakes in the past and will make more in the future. Such is life. Just thought I'd say so. In fact, when I first met you, I certainly thought you were the world's best actress, a great beauty and Hollywood royalty, but I never thought you were perfect either. I liked you for who and what you were. I might be a bit late back tonight....

Dear Juliet Regarding a certain State Reserve in Steinbeck country, I thought I'd just make passing mention of a brief and personal thought, quiet and beneath your ken. Not a mote in God's eye nor anyone else's. Something like: "Though about Point Lobos, pity it cannot be," and add a link to Perry Como's Impossible ... Oh, look and see ! But I think I understand that a daughter of narcissists always believes that love is conditional, that the other shoe is forever poised to drop if you're not always perfect. That at any moment, I could turn into some sort of violence-crazed maniac bent on revenge like Dr. Evil if I didn't get my way. So I thought I'd take a risk and simply say: No, I won't. I'm just sad it's impossible. That you weren't able to see the view from the Hyatt, walk past Brad Pitt's place, sit on that petrified log and have a pastrami and rye sandwich with me. I'm sorry you didn't sit on Drusilla's beach...

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...