Our Creative Writers met on Wednesday 01 July 2026 for a session that explored some of the delights of summer.
After a short session on how to write about characters in a story, we had a poem asserting the glory of a cream tea in a summer garden, and a second poem about small toy parrot left by a child in his room. We then had a story about a ghost returning to the flat where she had lived and finding that it was now derelict and not at all as she remembered it. She looks in a mirror and sees how her own appearance has changed.
We were then off to the coast of South Carolina for a continuation of our 18th Century tale of a master mariner supplying the British forces during the American War of Independence. From the 1780s we jumped to the 1960s for the second instalment of a young man who witnessed the Great Train Robbery and has picked up a bag of notes left by the robbers. The notes are untraceable as they were due to be shredded and the numbers were not recorded. The dilemma is taking its toll on the young man. Should he hide the notes or should he spend them?
We then dealt with two challenges: the first was to construct a poem where the final words of 14 lines are provided and the writer has to create the rest of each line. The second challenge was to write a poem where the first line has 14 syllables, the second line has 13 syllables and so on down to a single syllable for the last line. These challenges will require some careful thought and preparation!
We then returned to our story of a family that had come back from holiday to find that their home had been sold without their knowledge. The family has started the process of regaining the title, but it is not a quick process. We then had the story of a child who befriends a stick in a park, and describes the stick as his friend. The child is horrified when his father breaks the stick in two so that it will fit in the car for the journey home. We closed with stories about a cookery group getting to grip with the many dishes, both sweet and savoury, from around the world that can be made with rice.
Our next meeting will be on Wednesday 15 July 2026 at 10:00am.