Minutes of the meeting at La Rosa Hotel on the above date.
Present: Adele, Harry, Ian, Jan, Jenny, John, Jonathan, Kaz, Laura, Magda, Michele, Suzanne.
Topic: Members’ work-in-progress.
Matters Arising
Suzanne reports that her book: Dancing in Heaven has been accepted by the indie publisher Reconnecting Rainbow.
John reported that his novel Paint It Jack will have its book launch in Beckett’s Café in Skinner Street, Whitby on Thursday evening, 6th February. The thank-you party is by invitation only because of venue restrictions on numbers attending.
Members’ Readings
John — continued reading from his 3rd novel, Bugle Blast. A mysterious box belonging to the young hero’s father is opened. It contains some remarkable mementos.
Adele — read a poem: The Silence of Trees, which was well received.
Harry — continued reading his 1960s seafaring memoir, Sea Wife, handing out copies to read along. The Marwarri is making for a new anchorage in Chalna in the Ganges delta. The shipping company gets an official report from the author, serving as radio officer. It entertainingly describes the state of the radio room and its equipment (damp, flooded and mouldy), with appropriate recommendations.
Pakistan (“the Land of the Pure”) is treated, plus some of the antecedents to its rocky relations with its neighbour India, not to mention its former province, now Bangladesh.
Michele — read a further instalment of her novel in-progress: The Undesirables, set in Southern Africa during the Boer War, 1898-1902. Nils (Anna’s brother) is a POW on St Helena. Their treatment stands in sharp contrast to that of Anna and her family.
Nils commiserates with the other POWs and lament the progress of the war. He does not yet know about the death of his mother in horrific conditions in Camp Irene, a concentration camp near Pretoria.
Jonathan — read a poem Some Lines, which has recently appeared in The Author, the journal of the SCPSW (Society of Civil and Public Service Writers). Condemning the hypocrisy of official romanticisation of war: it begins “Don’t talk to me of sacrifice…!”
Magda — read a poem: A Handful of Words, flinging to the wind some harsh words the poet has recently received.
Jenny — read Chapter 16 of her period novel in-progress based on the historical figure of Mary Eleanor Bowes, the heiress of a vast fortune from the Durham coalfields. Irish adventurer Andrew Stoney comes to London looking for Mary Bowes to prey upon. Disguised in a black domino, he spies on the household, using his seductive charms on a kitchen maid to learn the servants’ gossip about the residents and their plans. To his dismay he discovers that Mary is planning to return shortly to Gibside, her stately home near Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He has a stroke of good fortune when the disaffected housekeeper Mrs Parrish appears to be open to his advances.
Jan — outlined the book she wants to write about a distant relative, Christiana Whitfield, who achieved notoriety in the 19 cent.
Suzanne — read a chapter The Minister from her recent book. The narrator is a trainee Unitarian minister during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, when victims were widely condemned as clearly suffering divine vengeance. This cruel theory is demolished for the narrator on meeting a young haemophiliac boy undergoing residential treatment, during which he has received AIDS-contaminated blood from America and terminally contracts the disease.
Ian — read an article Brylcreem Boy, characterising the mid-1950s and its teenage Palais culture in terms of an endearing and enduring consumer product.
The meeting closed at 1:00 PM.
Whitby Writers Group 