The Mystery

The Mystery

Happy New Year!  I hope that you had a lovely Christmas season.  In my family, Christmas Day 2019 will long be remembered as being very special, because that afternoon my niece, Suzy, gave birth to a little boy.  Needless to say, we were all thrilled!


However, I shall also remember that festive season for another quite different reason, because, in addition to a large pile of lovely presents, I received two intangible gifts: a Mystery followed by a Coincidence!  I wonder, dear reader, if you can offer any explanation for the Mystery?  I still haven’t been able to solve it!

Here’s what happened.  About ten days before Christmas I saw that one of my cards was from my friend Stuart.  I immediately recognised his handwriting on the envelope because of the way he strokes the letter ’t’ and gives a sort of flourish to certain capital letters: B, P, K.

A week later I was surprised to see the same handwriting on another envelope – or so I thought!  The ‘t’s had the same long stroke, the capital letters, B, P and K had the same kind of flourish, while my house number 38 looked identical to the previous one.

 Had Stuart sent me a second card by mistake? I wondered – having occasionally done that myself.  But when I opened the envelope, I was astonished to find this affectionate message in completely different handwriting. 

From ‘Grandpa + Grandma + Tilly’!  Well, my grandparents all died decades ago.  And, who or what is Tilly?  A cat?  A dog?  A budgie?  You will see that there is a tear on the left-hand side.  That is because, stuck to the paper, there was a gift voucher for £25!  It tore the card as I lifted it out in order to read the signature.  The writer had omitted to include their grandchild’s name.  “Oh dear”, I thought, “somewhere there is somebody who will be disappointed not to receive a Christmas present from his/her grandparents!  How can I send it on to them?”


At church the next morning I asked if anyone knew a couple who were grandparents and had a pet named Tilly.  No success.  Then someone asked if I had noticed the postcode.  I had not – being too busy concentrating on the handwriting.  Now I saw that it had come from the Aberdeen sorting office.  Aberdeen!  I didn’t know anyone there, did I?


But suddenly I thought of John Malcom, who had been one of my Modern Languages classmates at Glasgow University and who now lives in Aberdeen.  Since the 40^th anniversary of our graduation John has sent Christmas cards to us all. Now I remembered having previously noticed the similarity between his handwriting and Stuart’s.


 However, that didn’t solve the mystery of the grandparents, Tilly and the £25 voucher! Did John and his wife Isobel have any grandchildren? A pet called Tilly? If not, perhaps John and a friend who has a grandchild, plus a ‘Tilly’, had sat together writing Christmas cards and addressing the envelopes, and somehow one of the friend’s cards had accidentally been put in the envelope addressed to me?


I phoned another former classmate, who gave me John’s telephone number – plus the information that John and Isobel have neither grandchildren nor a pet.  When I called John and explained my dilemma, he was just as mystified as I was.  He and Isobel had written and addressed the cards together, just as they always did.  They had no grandchildren and knew of no Tilly (human or animal!)


Determined to get the gift voucher to its rightful owner, I sent an email to the letters page of the Aberdeen Press and Journal, in the hope that one of its readers could help.  I enclosed my address and telephone number, but have had no response.


There is a small piece of Sellotape on the back of the envelope, to keep it closed.  Probably the sender had wanted to ensure the safety of the gift voucher.  But what if somebody, having felt the hardness of the voucher, had taken it out, spent it, then put it back in an envelope chosen at random (mine) and sealed it with the Sellotape?  But no!  When I took the voucher to the shop in question, I was assured that it was still worth £25…  So, the Mystery remains!

Now for the Coincidence … or perhaps I should say ‘Coincidences’.   A minor one is that both cards show a robin sitting on a branch, looking down at a pal - another robin/ a bear cub.  Yes, I know that many Christmas cards have robins on them!  But wait!  On 3 January, while I was still puzzling over the Mystery, a present arrived from France: a DVD from my friends Pascal and Soizic ROBIN.  I chortled with delight when I saw the first two words of the title:  LE MYSTERE!  Here is the cover.

The mystery in the film concerns the true identity of the author of a best-selling novel who used the pseudonym ‘Henri Pick’.  It was solved when the main character noticed the formation of the letter ‘K’!  (This led to the owner of the faulty typewriter.)


Once again, I ask myself (and you!): What is the significance of such mysteries and coincidences?  I do believe that they indicate the existence of another, invisible, reality which cannot be explained by mere human logic and which binds us all together in a wonderful ‘golden network’.


 On 4 January, the day after the parcel arrived from France, I took part in a lovely choral event, in which we rehearsed some key choruses from Handel’s Messiah.  Our conductor sang a bass recitative and aria with words from the New Testament, based on chapter 51 of the apostle Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians.  How I relished hearing him begin with ‘Behold, I tell you a mystery!’


This is what Paul went on to write: ‘We shall not all die. Instead we shall all be changed, in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye…  For this mortality must put on immortality’…  In other words, ‘Death is not the end.’

Thanks be to God.