Light in the tunnel

Each day, we will post a short article by one of Darton, Longman and Todd’s amazing authors, offering a personal reflection on our current situation in life. Sometimes this will be written with reference to one of their books, and sometimes about how they are living in response to the COVID-19 coronavirus and our current world situation. We hope it will give you a taste of the depth and diversity of DLT’s list – books for heart, mind and soul that aim to meet the needs and interests of all.

Today’s post is by Simon Parke, author of the fantastic Abbott Peter Mysteries – crime thrillers with a delightful spiritual seam – and Pippa’s Progress – a contemporary re-telling of Bunyan’s classic. You can buy eBook copies of his books here, or physical copies (supply chains allowing) here.

Light in the tunnel

 We are not short of negative stories at the moment, deep in these extraordinary and dismantling times. So here’s a different sort of coronavirus story; one with a thick slice of hope.

I was up in London recently to lead a quiet day, in the days when we could still meet with each other. The venue was the lovely Medatio Centre in Clerkenwell, just up from Kings Cross. But, arriving early (always my wish), I decided to turn left instead of right at the top of Pentonville Road – and so found myself in Chapel Market.

For those unfamiliar with the territory, it’s an open market of long-standing, full of busy stalls selling fruit, clothes, plants, all sorts of gear, just off Upper Street – and a place where I worked for a few years in Sainsburys. It was moving for me to be back there, to stand again in its noisy, vibrant arms, to smell and remember, to feel another life I once lived. I sat in a new Costa, looking across at my old shop; though it is now an Iceland. Time and tide ...

And as I sit, I watch a woman on the table next to me. She’s putting on some anti-bacterial handwash. I’m clearly looking too interested, because she asks me if I’d like some. I happily accept and discover she’s from Singapore and that she made it herself, with 65% vodka and some aloe vera.

‘The alcohol has to be 65% or it is without protective value,’ she says.

A man asks if he can join me at my table and I say ‘Yes’. He too accepts the offer of some hand lotion. We discover he is from Iran, as another woman - a blonde in her forties and on the table by the door - joins our conversation. We are now a hand-lotion meeting.

The blonde hasn’t realised how important the percentage of alcohol is, and wants details of the recipe; but our Iranian friend has some other thoughts he wishes to share. ‘You can ignore me,’ he says, ‘and I’m not sure if it’s right to tell you this.’

‘But I think you’re going to tell us just the same,’ says the blond. 

And he does tell us, moving into an impassioned speech, among the flat whites, about the roots of this virus. ‘They live on dead animals,’ he says. ‘If we didn’t murder and torture animals for our food, these viruses wouldn’t happen in the way they do.’

We discover he is a vegan; but a supremely fit one, as he is keen to explain. ‘I am always in the gym,’ he says, ‘look at my arms!’ He rolls up his sleeves; they are impressive. ‘And I run a lot and I’m never ill. I’m just saying. You can be a vegan and fit.’

I have edited the speech slightly, it was longer, but you get the important gist; and soon after this, we disband for our separate Saturday adventures. The blonde woman is off to buy some vodka for her hand-washing – ‘I may just use it straight’, she says - while I walk to Clerkenwell, charmed by the truth that the virus, which is meant to separate, has, in fact, created a brief and international community that would never otherwise have occurred.

There is some light in this dark and disturbing tunnel; and I hope there is for you, as these dismantling days unfold. And if you are self-isolating in enforced hermitry – well, what a wonderful opportunity, ladeez and gennelmen, to visit the lubberly-jubberly DLT ebook library, where there’s writing – and I tell you no lie, on my grand muvver’s life – which has somehow been waiting for you all these years ...

(Sorry, I’ve gone into full ‘stall-holder’ mode. Where did I get that from?)

My own contribution is the Abbot Peter murder-mystery series – a detective who the Daily Mail called ‘a true original’. Like all the great detectives of fiction, he enters the darkness in the belief hope can be found there.

Strangely topical, eh?