Welcome to Altopia
It's a mad, mad, mad, mad world.
What a great film that was. I remember going to see it with friends back in the 1960’s. We all laughed so much there was a danger we would be thrown out of the cinema. I was delighted when it turned up on the television a few months ago and I convinced Mrs Altopia to sit down and watch it with me. I can’t say she was very impressed, but the sad thing is, neither was I. The film obviously hasn’t changed in the intervening period – maybe it’s my sense of the absurd that has altered so dramatically?
And speaking of the absurd, for the benefit of those who read my last epistle, I have to report that Myrtle the Turtle shows no sign of relenting in her desire to make me feel utterly stupid. You will probably remember that I made light of Mrs A's new found animal guide – a turtle, and was then deluged with turtles from every conceivable direction. They are still turning up anywhere and everywhere on a daily basis, and I have come to see this situation as an object lesson in not getting too comfortable in my analysis of the way the universe really works.
I’ve always been fascinated by coincidences, and though I can’t explain my reasoning adequately, I long ago came to the conclusion that at least some coincidences are actually nothing of the sort. I was still in my twenties when I was first introduced to the ‘Cosmic Joker’ and he, she or it has been dogging my footsteps ever since. One thing I have noticed is that coincidences are like buses – you don’t see one for ages and then loads turn up at the same time. I was therefore not in the least surprised, amidst all these turtles, that something mindblowingly unlikely cropped up just a couple of days ago.
Being the sort of writer I am, I tend to deal in some strange subjects. Right now I’m co-writing a second book on that strange little building in Midlothian, Scotland – Rosslyn Chapel. If you haven’t heard of it you clearly have not read the book or seen the film ‘The Da Vinci Code’ because Rosslyn Chapel figures heavily in the story. The Chapel is a very strange little gothic masterpiece from the 15th century. It is surrounded with myths and legends and together with a co-writer I have been doing my best to sort out the truth from the fiction.
Rosslyn Chapel was dedicated to St Matthew, the disciple and gospel writer and we discovered that there was a good chance that the supposed skull of St Matthew may have been housed, or indeed could still be housed in the Chapel’s vault. For some reason I have a particular fascination for saints and their relics. Whenever we are on the Continent I am always dragging poor Kate round one cathedral or another, in search of saints I haven’t come across before and I have to say that this aspect of our research intrigues me. Thanks to the wonderful ‘Interweb’ I was able, just last week, to view pictures of dozens of ‘reliquaries’. Reliquaries are the caskets that the relics of saints – pieces of clothing, personal objects and most usually bones, were stored in, so that adoring pilgrims could look at them.
Some reliquaries are extraordinary, being made of gold and silver, covered with precious stones. One such example came to my attention. It had once held the bones of a Northern French saint, was made in the 14th century, is about three feet high and has the form of a gothic building – in fact a building that looks almost exactly like Rosslyn Chapel.
This got me thinking. Nobody knows quite ‘why’ Rosslyn Chapel was built because it certainly isn’t a church in the accepted sense of the word, and never has been. In form it is small and squat and on an aerial photograph it looks just like the French reliquary I saw on the web. All of a sudden I was struck with one of those notions that sometimes come into the brain red hot and fully formed. What if Rosslyn Chapel was a ‘giant’ reliquary and had been created specifically to hold St Matthew’s skull? It isn’t so far-fetched; reliquaries usually carry panels depicting the life of the saint whose relics they contain. In the case of Rosslyn Chapel much of the ornate stone carving, inside and out seems to relate to the supposed life and actions of St Matthew.
The problem was always going to be explaining this idea to my co-writer, John Ritchie, who did not have by background in saints and their cults. I tentatively sent him an email, broaching the subject carefully but without going into too much detail. That was late in the afternoon. At 7pm I received a phone call from John, advising me that there was a documentary on BBC Four half an hour later, which would be dealing specifically with reliquaries. This fact had come to my attention just a few minutes earlier when I had looked at the television listings and I was about to ring John to tell him.
So comprehensive was this documentary that there was nothing left to explain to John and of course because I’ve been into the subject for so long, I found it enthralling. After it had finished John rang me again, asking me if I knew the writer of the program or had taken part in its creation. The answer to both questions was ‘No’. John was totally gobsmacked because during the documentary the narrator had dealt with a building in Paris called 'Saint Chapelle', which had been built to hold the supposed crown of thorns from the crucifixion. It looks something like Rosslyn Chapel and was described in the program as being ‘a giant reliquary but definitely not a church’.
Perhaps there have been television documentaries about reliquaries in the past, though if so I have never seen one. The subject tends to be quite specialised and until Google came along it was difficult to research at all. Despite my protestations to the contrary, John now thinks I am some sort of wizard and that I ‘summoned up’ the documentary just for his edification.
I sit and think about the situation, as yet another turtle flies past outside the office window and I remain as puzzled and incredulous as I have always been. Somewhere, close at hand and yet far away, I can hear gentle but mischievous laughter.
