In his prologue to The Return of The Ancient Mariner Nicholas John has written that it is quite a while since William Shepherd disappeared. He continues: ‘I know that his close friends think we must assume the worst and I should go ahead with publication of the manuscripts he left us.'

'Still I'm bit hesitant as it seems to be tempting fate. My sister is uncertain too. In fact last week she had this line about how Daddy was probably just waiting for some stuff to be published and then he would return from his Cannibal Kingdom in the South Seas. I was really missing him at the time so I sort of snapped back at her something about Pippi having gone to find her father instead of hanging around waiting. Anyway, no matter. I decided we should go ahead and what's done is done.’

But although the decision has been made it is still not quite so straightforward. There is for instance a note in the back of Journal Number 41 about a book by a Columbia University Professor James Shapiro entitled 1599 - A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare. His booksellers…Heffers in Cambridge with whom he had an account…have confirmed that this was dispatched to his post office box in Rye in December and appears to have been collected.

Also on Page 121 of the journal...in the final entry dated Wednesday 27th December 2006...William Shepherd had written, ‘Now 2006 is behind me I can relegate my political writings to the foot of my priority list and devote 2007 to the more mundane task of making speculative gains on the Stock, Money and Derivatives markets by way of Spread Betting with IG-Index…just enough to buy a cottage in Gotland, a house near Rye Church and a place in France’…and free up my time and energy in 2008 and beyond to the novels I have outlined in my Blogging Odyssey.’

As William Shepherd always insisted that he would never take a mortgage but always hold Real Estate free and clear this means his sights were set on making millions rather than thousands. There are one or two other hints.

In this same journal entry for instance is a remark that ‘…the Contrarian Position I have taken on Global Warming and the Carbonista Theology lends itself to a Speculative Portfolio’ and another that ‘…it probably makes sense to circulate an updated Curriculum Vitae and get myself a Broom Cupboard in The City where I can go to ground for a year or so.’

But for the time being let us bring William Shepherd’s Blogging Odyssey to an end with the rest of the Prologue to the strange tale of The Ancient Mariner. Let Nicholas John takes up the narrative once again.

‘I don't know what my father would have done with the manuscript and I certainly don't feel that I have any better qualifications for deciding this than the reader. The original journal is now with the Arthur Ransome Institute at the University of Texas in Augusta.'

'Obviously Fourth World Scholars will want to compare this edition with the journal original. The list of headings and the chapter titles seem to be the last thing my father did with the manuscript so I have assumed that this was the way he wanted it. But nonetheless I think he would have edited extensively… working from the typeset and paginated transcripts of his handwritten journal extracts.’

‘At any rate I have not tried to second guess what might have been. Instead I have arranged for as accurate a transcription of the handwritten journal pages as possible. Even the changing of names from Håkan to Glenn and from Julie to Kim worried me because the journal entries don't tie in to the text if you change them.’

‘But as my sister has pointed out he was searching for a title and names as he was writing the book. At the end he decided on the Kim and Glenn Bandshow because of the play on the KGB name, so obviously he would have changed to these names right from the start. That's what I've done anyway but otherwise what you have here is my father's Unfinished Symphony transcribed without any alteration from his Novel Journal.’

‘It's quite a while now. There's nothing I wouldn't do to bring my father back…even though he said that he was in me and with me and I should look after Number One. But if it's not possible then at least I have kept the promise I made a dozen years ago. Here Daddy is the book you wanted me to make sure got published as an Academic Inn Book. For you…wherever you are…here is your Tale of The Ancient Mariner. G'Day Mate! Your son Nicholas John.’

At this year’s Winter Solstice, Ilbereth, Aslak and Nicholas John gathered in Muonio for the release of The Return of the Ancient Mariner. William Shepherd had entrusted the manuscript to them 210 turns of the moon previously.

The prologue is written by Nicholas John and starts like this. ‘It's quite a while since anyone heard from my father. Helena says she isn't worried. He'll show up. He always does. I'm not so sure. People who disappear in Colombia normally disappear forever.

But he only said he was going to South America…was Helena's response…to put everybody off the scent. He was just covering his tracks. You know how he keeps telling us that we have to think for ourselves and decide what's true and what's fantasy...and how men and women have a different way of understanding fact and fiction...men being poets and film-makers and women being novelists and members of parliament’.

Yes I know. But Helena wasn't there that last time. I can still remember every detail. The sun had gone down but they were still serving at Paviljongkonditori on the shores of Ridderfjärden. ‘How come you sit on the inside and everyone else sits on the outside?’ he had asked me. Then he started on about how when two people came into a café the second person never wanted to sit at the same place as the first person. I was feeling really good at the time.

We had just come from St. Erik's Squash Hall. I was playing off a handicap of five but I won…two sets to one. ‘Six games all,’ he said. But we were playing the best of three sets, so I knew he just said that to irritate me. In the first set it was 3-0; then I took the second set 3-2 and the third set 3-1. He was pretty pleased at how well I played…although he wouldn't admit it. ‘That's the last time you play off a five point start,’ he said at the end. ‘From now on your handicap is reduced to four’. ‘OK,’ I'd replied, ‘that’s just fine by me.’

As we sat there at his favourite Kungsholmen café...the one he wrote about in Report From A Swedish Village...I was remembering the game…how in the third set I had dropped my racquet in the middle of the rally. Back came the ball off the front wall and there I was…perfectly positioned…but without a racquet. So I hit the ball with my fist. I lost the point but I was remembering him turning to me afterwards…laughing. ‘Amazing’, he said ‘I've never seen that before. Mind you I don’t think there’s anything in the rules against it’. And he laughed again.

I won the game in the end. I hit it just right…low and just over the bar. He tried to cut across in front of me but I'd hit it just right. ‘Great shot!’ he said. That put me at 2-1 with just four points between me and my first win.

Anyway I was remembering and smiling to myself when this motor boat went by. ‘I'll tell you,’ he said, ‘because you understand what I mean when I talk about things this way. I don't think I'm going to buy a house. I think I'll buy a boat. Use it as a houseboat. Moor it at Alan's place on Ljusterö for a few weeks. Then pull up anchor and head for Gotland. Winter in Cork. It's got to be able to do the canals and lakes of Northern Europe and also get across the North Sea when the weather's good...wooden boat…one that I can work on converting to solar power. Not the North Atlantic...something that can do the North Sea and The Baltic’.

I was only half-listening as I was still going over the squash game in my mind. But then my father put this handwritten booklet in front of me and said ‘Nicholas. I’m putting this in your safe-keeping. I am leaving Stockholm next week and this is the only copy of a book I’ve been working on here in Stockholm’. I turned it over.

There was a map on the back. I asked him why Oulu was on the map and not Tarku and he talked about there being two Baltic maps that overlapped...one with the big cities and this one with the small country towns where Academic Inn Books would be sold. But he didn't dwell on that...he can really go on sometimes... that's what I mean about Helena not having been there like I was. He turned to inside the front page and pointed to something he had written.

‘You can look on this rather like my literary last will and testament,’ he said. ‘I know I can trust you.’ It was then I began to understood that he was serious. ‘In the event of my death or disappearance,’ he had written, ‘this should be published exactly as it is.’ It felt like he was telling me he was going to die…so I changed the subject and told him about the Olaus Magnus Map and the new Iceland stamps. But I took the manuscript and hid it away in a drawer.