Chocolate Chunk Cookies in Church and Chapel...

Dear Juliet

They started building St. Andrew's Church in Shifnal sometime in the 12th century, and they're still not finished. I got involved with it just after I arrived in Shifnal (September 2020) to get to know the community because they had an Open Door (tea and biscuits) session every Tuesday morning for all the older folk. I checked I wasn't too young, started taking the tables out at the end (partly because no one else could), and with the exception of a two year pandemic gap, on it's gone ever since. I once again became "your local celebrity no one's ever heard of" although this time, the birth certificate matched up and my accent largely fitted. Not that there was much intolerance shown to me in Scotland, but the question, rarely asked, "how do you like it up here?" had got old very quick.

For a while, I was part of a group of older guys who congregated round a mobility scooter in the corner, but time winnowed our ranks. A nice old gent called Paul had so much dementia he couldn't talk but sat there looking serene. He went off on a cruise and never came back. I made a good friend called David, almost literally a cheeky cockney from London who'd worked in Fleet Street, had a great interest in current affairs and brought out the best in my brain by discussing Trump and Ukraine. 

Mind you, I was oddly miffed when David said I was an Englishman, but there's no denying I was born in Wolverhampton.

David died last year. Galloping Parkinson's as I privately put it, so now I just chat to anyone who's available. They're people like any others, just older. Shropshire has one of the highest populations of elderly folk in the UK, and there's hardly anyone left willing or able to take care of them.

At the Hyatt Carmel Highlands in 2023, I picked up in the complimentary newspaper that the amount of young Americans coming into work (I'm not sure whether that's in California or the US as a whole) is only 6% but your elderly population is set to skyrocket by 31%, so we're all in schtuck together.

But it's a nice church, I do eat a lot of chocolate chunk biscuits there and I think Dru would like it.

I think that time she met the sister at church in the Congo was some of my better writing...

“You are welcome in this house,” the sister said. “Sit with me and pass the hours of the night.”

Those few words brought long years of exile to an end, and the Church took its lost child back into the fold.

Xander left them like that. At the door, he looked back to see the sister and the novice contemplating the light at the altar.

Dru had woken screaming in the night sometimes, clutching desperately for Xander and shaking as he’d held her. Finally, she had explained why. Angelus had sired her at the convent, but as her heartbeat slowed, he and Darla had drowned her in a bath of virgin blood drained from the nuns.

It was an inspired perversion of purity, the blood helping the demon take firm possession of her before she rose. But her last human memory was of blindly smothering in a thick red haze as merciless hands held her under.

The Scoobies had been more than a little surprised to learn that a vampire could be scared of the dark.  There had even been a few sniggers, quickly muted. But they wouldn’t have laughed if they had known why, nor would they have wondered why Drusilla stared up at the stars so often, looking for the light.

Now it seemed she was rising again from the dark, but not as a demon. This time she sat with the sister, bathed in the light of grace, and on her face was a look of peace.

That lump she so often brought to his throat was back, and he welcomed it like an old friend.

He shooed the children away and went outside to wait for his lady.

(Drusilla's Redemption)

Overall, best read to the theme from The Wild Geese and, well, that other one.

I hope you're okay. I think of you every day, so very far away.

Love,

James

P.S. And tomorrow, The Walk...

P.P.S. Oh hell, have a hug!🤗