Wednesday, March 08, 2006

(108) The novel about The Second Coming

In late 1994, I entered Murray Sharp’s home to find him in conversation with Anna Durrant and her friend Rosie. Murray asked whether Fiona Pitt-Kethley, from whose home I had just journeyed, was working on any new book.
I replied that she had started a novel about The Second Coming.

At this there were gasps all round.
It transpired that earlier that evening Anna had suggested that Murray should write something and he had come up with the idea of a novel about The Second Coming.

This was Fiona´s novel, published in 2000 -

One evening in early May 2001 I was looking at the questions in The Huge Quiz Book published by Wilson, which my wife had bought me.
One question concerned the meaning of Parousia. 
The next day, Sean Patrick Ryan was commenting on my book, Coincidences. He said that the only word in it that he did not know the meaning of was ´Parousia´.

So he then asked me what it meant. 
I told him it means The Second Coming.

...   ...   ...
Btw, the last communication I had with Anna Durrant was in 1997 when she returned a copy of a book of mine she had borrowed -The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra - and enclosed a photo of her newborn daughter, Ayesha.

So permit me to attempt to weave seven strands together in an effort to form a coincidence.

Anna 
Durrant´s family home was in Putnoe Street, Bedford, 
only a few hundred metres from my own. 
Even closer to my family home was that of 
Anne 
Cooper.
Each of these ladies produced a baby 
at around the age of twenty-eight
out of wedlock, 
a first child, 
a daughter
And to each was given the name of 
Ayesha

Anne Cooper´s Ayesha coming into this world cerca 1985.
...   ...   ...
Ayesha is a name of Arabic and Persian origin meaning "alive", "life" and "womanly". 

No comments: