On Wednesday 02 September 2026, our Creative Writing Group met for another glimpse into several alternative realities.

We started with a visit to “Kentonbury” which was much appreciated by those going there, but there were one or two hilarious hiccips on the journey. Fortunately the trains were running on the day, but not necessarily at the right time for the visitors. Much to their surprise, a coffee break in a pub resulted in them all ‘winning’ a £10 note which they used for their lunch break!

We then travelled forward to the year 2280 to hear a junior school class being taught about Renaissance. This Renaissance was a strategy for population control and owed more to Logan’s Run, Soylent Green and Brave New World than to the 14th and 15th Century Court of Florence or Venice. However, there were sneak appearances from Dad’s Army and from Joyce Grenfell!

We next visited a parallel universe where there was a creative writing group! The topics and behaviour seemed to mirror some of the issues we have experienced, but the criticism was constructive, and we managed to see the good side of ourselves in the story.

We then moved on to a pet wire fox terrier meeting a new pet in the family and having to decide whether or not they would be able to get on together. The new pet is a ferret and fortunately a strong bond develops between the two of them.

We then had two poems – the first about a trip to the Tounge Sand Fort in the Thames Estuary on the ship The Royal Daffodil.in 1957 that left two boys convinced that anything was now possible. The second poem considered how an event as simple as drawing a breath can link what has happened in the past to what will happen in the future.

We then heard some stories that could feature in our Creativity Session in November touching on the discovery that a young lady was an adopted orphan from a monastery in Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh India. From there, we were playing Monopoly for real money in order to fund an operation in the USA, and after that we heard about a mysterious brown envelope waiting in the hall. Was it bad news? Could it be ignored? We finally found out that it had been delivered to the wrong address!

We were then in a Russian jail wondering what the authorities had discovered. Had we done something wrong? What would the consequences be for us? The story was woven into a mirrored 14 to 1 – the first line had 14 words, then next 13 words, and so on down to one word – Clang, the sound of the door to the cell slamming. We found out what happened with a 1 to 14 as the second part of the mirrored text.

We finished with a second story about adoption, this time from Guandong in the South of China. The trip to the Far East was tinged with sadness on the return. However, the child prospered and did well, studying at university. There was romance and a return to China in the conclusion.

All of these adventures passed the two hours very quickly. Our next meeting will be on Wednesday 16 September 2026 at 10:00 am when the optional theme will be “Into the dark”!