Minutes |26 February 2026

Minutes of the meeting at La Rosa Hotel on the above date.

Present: Adele, Harry, Ian, Jan, Jenny, Jill, Magda, Michele, Pip.

Apologies: Gill, John, Laura, Suzanne.

Topic: Members’ work-in-progress.

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Matters Arising

Ian reminded the meeting on behalf of Suzanne that Jupiter Cloud bookshop will be holding a book festival in York this Sunday 28 February.

Members’ Readings

Jan — the first-person narrator graduates with a dental diploma. With her husband and two children, Piers and Luca, she moved to a crumbling farmhouse in France. The house agent being unobtainable, they break into the cottage and find it lacks even the most basic services. They pitch their tent and camp in the front room for the night, and next day begin their renovation of the leaky property.

Harry — read a poem of remembrance for a deceased friend: Owen Micklefield is Gone. Ian asked him to read it again.

Ian — read from his recently completed novel: Anitra’s Petition.
Anitra has at last arrived on Mars. But it becomes apparent that the groubians have slipped her in by the back door. After spending the night in an army safe-house in Valles, her friend General Nanoud flies her to Fort Rainbow in Nix City. At all costs she must be kept out of the hands of the Vratch, the Olympian medical police.

Magda — continues her examination of the spectacular career of spoon-bender extraordinary: Uri Geller, and his claims to possess occult powers, after a mystical experience at the age of 6 and the alleged presence of a mysterious shape in the x-ray of his brain. Unlike the classical notion of a holy man, Geller has not led a life of contemplative poverty, but has embraced wealth and fame.

Pip — read the last chapter of her autobiography Caicos Moon, about coming of age on a Caribbean island. After gaining her qualifications she does not want to leave the island of South Caicos. There are tearful farewells, the most painful parting being with her horse Nimrod, whom she has to release back into the feral existence from which he came to her.

Jenny — continued reading from her period novel in-progress based on the historical figure of Mary Eleanor Bowes, the heiress of a vast fortune from the Durham coalfields. After beating Mary up when he discovered that careful prior legal arrangements prevent him getting his hands on the entire Bowes fortune, Andrew Stoney disappears for a while. Then he reappears, apparently reconciled to Mary who welcomes him back.
With the death of the present local MP, Andrew has big plans to run for Parliament, and needs Mary as a hostess to feast the people he must cultivate. Andrew has mislaid his favourite gold-pomelled cane, left behind in some brothel, and beats his valet Thomas for failure to take care of it. Thomas flees the household, and his sweetheart Anne decides also that the life of a lady’s maid is not for her. Lizzie is brought back out of the kitchen and Andrew grudgingly agrees to her reinstatement as lady’s maid to Mary. They shut up the London residence and the party journey north to the Bowes estate, which Andrew has yet to see,

Jill — Sarah unexpectedly inherits the Welsh rural cottage of Matt, the strange father she never knew. The covid pandemic is raging, so Sarah is effectively under house arrest at the spooky cottage. The Scarecrow, a figure from her childhood, looms large in her imagination.

Michele — Dr Fryer, the newly appointed military surgeon, has a new patient, six year-old Eleanor, whom he has diagnosed with consumption. Young Eleanor needs help with her breathing, which means he is a constant visitor to the house of her mother, the society hostess Mrs Pringle. Her alcoholic husband edits a Cape Town newspaper. Mrs Pringle secretly ghost-writes his editorials for him when he is incapacitated by alcohol. She warns Dr Fryer about the Cape Town capacity for gossip.

The meeting closed at 1:10 PM.

Links (in accession order)…

Contact https://whitbywriters.com/contact/

La Rosa Hotel www.whitbywriters.com/venue

Suzanne https://whitbywriters.com/suzanne-elvidge/

Dancing In Heaven https://whitbywriters.com/2025/11/14/dancing-in-heaven-scarborough-launch/

Jupiter Cloud Festival https://jupitercloudbooks.co.uk/jupiter-cloud-book-festival

Harry www.whitbywriters.com/harry-nicholson

Owen Micklefield is Gone https://whitbywriters.com/2026/02/26/owen-micklefield-is-gone/

Michele www.whitbywriters.com/michele-randle

Uri Geller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uri_Geller

Ian www.whitbywriters.com/ian-clark