SO WE ARE OFF

So, we are just about to leave for Ireland. This is actually my first trip outside the UK since December 2004, and I am very much looking forward to it.

The main reason for going is to visit Tony Shiels, who is an old friend of mine and the nearest thing to a father I have left alive. If I may quote from my 2004 autobiography:

'As the date for my divorce hearing rumbled slowly closer, my wife, her family and friends, once again made it perfectly obvious that they were prepared to stoop pretty low in order to secure our divorce on as favourable terms - for them - as possible. I found myself in a position where in order to protect my ageing and ailing parents from witting or unwitting injury during the fall-out from this particular explosion, I was no longer able to confide in them to any major degree. Even so, my mother had a nervous breakdown, from which she never really recovered, and was subsequently stricken down by breast cancer - from which she did recover for a few years at least. Unable to confide in my own parents because of the enormity of the situation, I found a father figure in a very unlikely place. In many ways Tony "Doc" Shiels - the Wizard of the Western world - became a father to me between the closing weeks of 1996 and the spring of 1998.'

I also owe him my career. If I may quote another passage from the same book:

'Standing at the bar, Alison and I found ourselves next to an extraordinary Irishman. I've never met anyone like him up before or since. "I want a fokkin' Guinness and I want it now", he bellowed, and a dozen acolytes from all over the room hastened to his side, eager for the chance to buy him a drink. It took several minutes for me to realise who it was. It was Tony "Doc" Shiels, surrealchemist, and magician, sometimes referred to as the `Wizard of the Western World`. I whispered as much to Alison, who turned to me with a withering glance and told me that she had realised that all along. Tony, overhearing our conversation turned to me and boomed "Yes, of course I`m Doc Shiels. Who the fokk else would I be?", and a friendship was formed, which although it has been through its rocky moments, has lasted ever since.

Alison went exploring, whilst Tony and I sat down to the serious business of getting drunk. About half-an-hour into our mutual self-congratulation session, a middle-aged man in a brown suit approached us. He saw that I was wearing a VIP badge and that Tony was wearing a badge proclaiming him to be one of the speakers. He introduced himself as a features writer for one of the more anally retentive of the Sunday newspapers. He offered to buy us a drink, and gingerly asked who we were and could he have an interview with us? Tony Bellowed at him: "Of course you can buy us a drink you Saxon ********. And if you buy us a drink you can ask us anything you bloody well like. Who are we ye ask? I`m the Wizard of the Western world and this fat bastard is the greatest ******* cryptozoologist in the fucking world!"

I had arrived. As soon as the interview was over, we were surrounded by people wanting to talk to me about cryptozoology. One of them was a man called Dr Karl Shuker - then the leading cryptozoologist in Britain. We had spoken on the telephone but never met in person. However one of the fortean luminaries present took a photograph of us together and with the apparent endorsement of both Shuker and Shiels, I sold 200 copies of Animals & Men that day and signed up 30 new members. Alison and I had started the day practically bankrupt and we finished it with nearly 500 quid in our pockets and a completely unwarranted reputation for being a major player in the Cryptozoological community. The following weekend the interview with Tony and me appeared in the Sunday paper. It described my work in glowing terms, none of which I even faintly deserved, and didn't even allude to the fact that Tony and I were so spectacularly drunk when we did the interview that to this day I have no idea what I said.'

So, if it hadn't been for Tony I would certainly not be here now. I owe him my career, and I quite possibly owe him my life.

The least I can do is buy him a few drinks and give him an old computer once given to us by the late, semi lamented Simon Wolstencroft.

See you when we get back!