Climb The Steps To... San Diego?

Dear Juliet

As I've just had a physiotherapist pounding my back with a mallet (okay, slight exaggeration there), I don't feel up to a long post today; but as you're going to San Diego (not Scarborough Fair!) I'll make you a cambric shirt of memory from the early days of you, me, Dear Miss Landau and the comic-cons...

London, late 2010.

I'm carrying the divine statuette, I've been in the gym (boxing and otherwise) for six months and the shuttle's flying into Heathrow.

I'm very nervous, but as we come into land I notice that thinking of you gives me a little extra edge when I'm writing. I guess you're my muse.

I stay with a difficult friend in Muswell Hill, circuit towards Heathrow's Renaissance Hotel via Covent Garden and the Underground. There's some jam in Covent Garden so I take the emergency spiral staircase, statuette in hand...

193 steps.

I want to get you a rose, and learn there's actually a flower seller in Leicester Square's station (long gone now). I remember she gave me one with a short cut stem, done so nothing would snap. Then it's out on the long line to Heathrow (no Elizabeth Line then), taking a bus to Bath Road and gaining entry to the venue.

And there you were.

I gave you the statuette and the rose, and it was good to see you. I was still a bit awestruck by celebrity then; but of course I wasn't going to see Drusilla or Juliet the movie star, I was going to see the girl to whom I liked sending emails.

I guess the rose is long gone, but I hope the statuette's still there.

Love,

James












🌹

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