Appointment in Samarra, or : Of All the Gin Joints in All the Towns in All the World... (part two)

Dear Juliet

I think I'll do that thing about my being thirty-five tomorrow (hope you're not dying of curiosity) as I was thinking more about another thing: that Somebody Up There Likes Us but He Stomps You Hard if You Go the Wrong Way...

That's what it always felt like. That things were supposed to work out one way, and God help anyone who went in the wrong direction. I summed it all up in The Glorious 14th.

And as the late and not-so-great Rolf Harris might say, "oh, and it makes me wonder..."

Anyway...

I wasn't born in Scotland. I was born in Wolverhampton when my parents were living in a small Shropshire town called Shifnal. I mentioned this the first time we met but I was on the biggest adrenalin trip of all time and pretty incoherent, you probably didn't hear and I had no reason to refer to it again.

I intended to stay in Roberton, Scotland, but the independence referendum managed the massive job of making me change my perspective (could the tools running the country even preserve my pension?) and Macnab had debuted to a complete lack of interest.

I mean, honestly, they spend years yelling about their heritage and then when you present it to them on a platter, they ignore it! I belatedly realised that I knew exactly how Indiana Jones felt when the U.S. government fobbed him off after he'd brought them the Lost Ark of the Covenant!

I mean, my God, I paraphrase Raiders to explain the importance of the Book of Deer. That it's a window for looking at God, and it really is the case that, as Belloq said in this clip, “we are simply passing through history. This, this is history.”

I often start stuttering here. I ended up in the presence of the real thing. Not a copy, not a prop and not a reprint. The real thing. I briefly touched it and suggested it be loaned out to Aberdeen University Library. Not as dramatic as Raiders, but real.

Of course, I didn't actually bring the Book back but I brought word of it back. And nobody gave a stuff.

So, for this and many other reasons I decided I could hang around in Roberton feeling sorry for myself or just draw a line under it all, take a break from Scotland and try to reunite with my earliest actual roots.

None of this had anything to do with Dear Miss Landau.

I went back to Shifnal in September 2019, and nowadays I live down the road from the church where I was christened.

And then fate stepped in.

You were booked to appear at Telford International Centre in April 2020.

Telford is about three miles from Shifnal. The Centre is on the east side of town, about three miles from where I live.

I was even living in Telford at the time. In a rented flat in the suburb of Priorslee. I was there from September 2019 to September 2020.

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world...

Wales Comic-Con had decided to transfer there from Wrexham. I guess you'd been booked six to twelve months in advance.

If it had been literally anywhere else in England, I could have ignored it. Okay, maybe not Birmingham but certainly not Telford. If anything could deliberately have been designed to remind me of you, putting you right on my doorstep was that thing.

I think you're better-looking than Ingrid Bergman!

I didn't exactly sit brooding on a bar stool like Bogie, but...

But you were always on my mind.

The Covid pandemic scotched the first booking. I think you mucked up the ticketing for the second. But it still felt like fate or destiny had served it all up smooth as syrup.

I went along a couple of times anyway. Met Julie Benz. Rather liked her. Missed James Marsters, so when I was up in the West Highlands post-pandemic being literary and pretentious in Glenfinnan I thought I'd take the opportunity to catch up with him in Aberdeen. I always liked James, so I thought I'd try and tell him about the lost story arc as Slayers had just been brutally stomped and let you get a brief glimpse of me on the way out.

Anyway...

I see I've already summed it all up a bit in Return to the Sunlit City : part one, but Telford/Shifnal felt like The Appointment in Samarra.

As it says at the start of Dear Miss Landau:

"Allah the Merciful the Compassionate, weaves the threads of men’s destinies into many strange tapestries."

He surely does.

Here's looking at you, kid.