Minutes of the meeting at La Rosa Hotel on the above date.
Present: Adele, Gill, Jenny, John, Jonathan, Kaz, Laura, Pip, Ian (chair).
Apologies: Harry, Lesley, Michele.
Topic: Members’ work-in-progress.
Matters Arising
Jenny reported on the Christmas meal arrangements on 7 December. It is all booked with The Magpie Cafe. Unfortunately they don’t take bookings over the peak time of 12-2 PM, so we are booked-in for the meal at 2 PM. This leaves (at most) an hour to kill between the scheduled end of the normal meeting at La Rosa Hotel, and the start of our booking. Ian suggested we repair to the Captain Cook Bar of the Royal Hotel (opposite the Captain Cook monument) for a pre-prandial drink.
Members’ Readings
Gill — continued reading from her YA novel: Fabric of the Earth: Seven Witches and a Boy.
The party of witches, including their “tailor” Tommy Bradley (the boy hero), have left Lake Windermere (the one in Canada) and are hiking through a snowy forest when they are attacked by the villain and his minions and Tommy is wounded. He uses his magic needle to suture the wound, which heals completely. A bus takes them back to Lake Windermere. At a loss for what to do next, the witches call up The Dead to give them advice. The latter are puzzled as to how they can possibly help.
Adele — read a further instalment from her Covid Diary, commencing on 20 March 2022.
Just as lockdown restrictions are relaxed, the new covid variant has arrived in the Whitby area in a big way. Everyone knows someone who has caught it. But deaths and hospitalisations have not markedly increased.
Ian — continued reading from his (unpublished) children’s story: The Earthspot, written as a Christmas present for his grandchildren. After an experiment gone wrong, Spookie the Cat and her friend Dyspepsia are determined to find out why the school burned down during the holidays. Spookie has assumed they’d hear no more about the vanished spark, but to their horror they find a thin piercing beam of Hawking radiation (light given off by a black hole) emerging from beneath Teacher’s desk in the burnt-out classroom.
Jonathan — read a poem from Requiem by Humbert Wolfe entitled The Lovers: The Man Speaks.
Pip — read a further chapter from her memoir in-progress: Caicos Moon, describing her coming-of-age on South Caicos, a Caribbean island.
The author is in the last few weeks of her stay on the island. She is offered a trip to a nearby islet on a friend’s speedboat. They go scuba diving, until an inquisitive barracuda menaces them and they hastily get back on the boat.
John — read two poems: (i) a tribute to deceased Guardian journalist John Bilan, who had reported on the Bengali massacre, and (ii) a pantoum recalling the naval bombardment of Scarborough at Christmas, 1914, by the “Hun”.
Kaz — read a satirical short-story of same(?)-sex infatuation entitled What’s In A Name?.
The meeting closed at 12:50 PM.
Whitby Writers Group 