Minutes of the meeting at La Rosa Hotel on the above date.
Present: Adele, Graham, Ian, Jan, Jenny, Laura, Magda, Michele.
Apologies: Gill, Harry, John, Kaz, Lisa, Pip, Suzanne.
Topic: Members’ work-in-progress.
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Matters Arising
None
Members’ Readings
Ian — continued reading from his recently finished novel Anitra’s Petition.
Dolpou and Nanoud decide that, thanks to Petra’s powerful objections, there isn’t the ghost of a chance of Anitra’s petition for human rights being granted on the basis of her provenance. Instead the whole groubian nation must formally accept Anitra as one of them. Dolpou has convened the Zbor for that evening in the crypt of Fort Rainbow.
Anitra is accepted as fully groubian (and therefore an honorary human) in an emotional and evocative ceremony conducted entirely in spatio-color.
Adele — read an article exploring the mandrake, whether it is really just a mythical plant, its appearance in popular culture (e.g. as in Harry Potter – the need to wear ear-muffs when potting it on) and its alleged magical properties. In the discussion afterwards, members proferred additional evidence for its veridicity.
Jan — mentioned finding a new character to research: someone who fought in the Spanish Civil War.
Meanwhile she continued reading her co-authored memoir of a friend called Alice (unable to write for herself), who with her husband and two toddlers lived off-grid in a tiny French village near La Rochelle in 2012 or thereabouts.
Alice decides that something needed to be done about stray cats. She sets up a community project and does a deal with a local vet for a generous discount on having an adopted stray neutered and checked for health. She gets her first stray from a feral cat accidentally locked in the boot of a villager’s car, to which it was attracted by a dressed chicken.
Michele — distributed a synopsis of her recently finished book The Undesirables, a historical novel of the Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902. Members offered edits to clarify points made in the draft.
Magda — continued reading from her exploration of the issues surrounding dowsing. She read out a list of questions she had for a medium of her acquaintance
Jenny — continued reading from her period novel based on the historical figure of Mary Eleanor Bowes, the heiress of a vast fortune from the Durham coalfields. Andrew Stoney, “The World’s Worst Husband”, has finished reading Mary’s abject 100-page confession of all her misdeeds. Mary is still hoping to be reconciled to him, but Andrew, depraved and controlling, uses it to humiliate Mary in the cruellest way he can think of.
Laura — presented a thoughtful rationale of her work as an opinion pollster in deprived areas of the North-East. She is planning to conduct a survey of her own, distilled from all the questionnaires she has been commissioned to administer, many of which uncover issues they don’t sufficiently explore, or completely miss the mark. Such as the decay of town centres due to their active avoidance by local people, on account of the nuisance caused by people who in the words of one respondent “have lost their way” – engaging in behaviour exceeding the bounds of tolerance that a stable society, however poverty-stricken, would impose.
The meeting closed at 1:00 PM.
Links (in accession order)…
Contact https://whitbywriters.com/contact/
La Rosa Hotel www.whitbywriters.com/venue
Ian www.whitbywriters.com/ian-clark
Anitra’s Petition https://whitbywriters.com/2026/05/07/clark-nida-anitras-petition/
Jenny https://whitbywriters.com/jenny-burns/
Mary Eleanor Bowes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Bowes,_Countess_of_Strathmore_and_Kinghorne
Whitby Writers Group 