Shirt...

...Studying at Cornell

Naughty Asteroid were having another book signing with a DW luminary, author and DW expression of surprise, Paul Cornell. Having attended two such signings there in the past month, Shirt correctly predicted that the queue would be not as long as that for Terrance Dicks, Eric Saward & Chris Achilleos; but longer than that for Andrew Cartmel (two others and Shirt when the signing began at the advertised start time – and the other two didn’t even buy Andrew’s promoted novel !). He therefore arrived about five minutes after the start time, to find a crowd rather than a queue, as Paul was about to launch into a reading from his latest ‘Shadow Police’ novel ‘Who Killed Sherlock Holmes ?’ (Can you guess why Shirt was there ?)

Shirt slid into a space, finding himself next to Andrew ‘Full Circle’ Smith.

Paul then went into a long passage about the discovery of the ghost of Sherlock Holmes stabbed with an all-too-real dagger, slowly losing the interest of the gathered horde (particularly those who had come in relation to the other promoted title ‘This Damned Band’, a trade paperback of his Rock-Horror-Comedy comic series), with the mumblings of some for him to hurry up becoming distracting.

Finally the author reached the punchline that most of the group had guessed minutes before, and sat down at the signing desk, whilst the group shuffled itself into a queue.

Fifteen minutes later, and Shirt was placing down the novel, which Paul swiftly signed, before being handed ‘Licence Denied’ and ‘Professor Bernice Summerfield: A Life of Surprises’, both edited by him, which were also swiftly signed, with Paul commenting on the rarity of the former.

“Would you like a copy of the previous book in the series ?”, asked Paul gesturing to the last in a pile of hardback editions of ‘The Severed Streets’, which had slowly been reducing.

Shirt hesitated.

“It’s free”, encouraged Paul.

Never one to forego a freebie, Shirt soon had another signed Cornell book.

Whilst in the queue, Shirt had glanced at the author biography at the front of ‘WKSH?’, and was surprised to learn that Paul had written an episode for Season 4 of ‘Elementary’. (“You’ve Got Me, Who’s Got You ?”)

He therefore thrust his phone to a member of Naughty Asteroid staff for a photo to be taken for his ‘Sherlockian Scribes’ collection. Not having prepared for such a photo, Shirt was “rocking” what Chalky later described as “the Ian Chesterton Coal Hill School Tie look”.

Retrieving his phone and moving away, collecting up his books, Shirt moved to a nearby bookshelf to sort himself out. Books stowed, and a brief glance at his phone indicated a message from Dufus.

GOD (or Tom as he’s also known) had been announced for a forthcoming Spirit Sinema event, already chock-full of ‘Trial of a Timelord’ guests, which the two had been considering attending.

“Should I book tickets ?”, asked Dufus’ text, just narrowly beating “Would you like this free hardback book ?” into second place for stupidest question of the evening.

Having texted and phoned Dufus to ensure that tickets were booked, and having paid for his book, Shirt made his way to the Sherlock Holmes Society of London’s Annual General Meeting, which was followed by the Sherlockian mind-reading skills of professional comedy magician, Ian Keable.

[PL]