BY KATIE MILLER

Our meeting was held, as usual, on the second Tuesday of the month.

Two new members joined us.

John Roberts, who deftly chaired the meeting, ensured everyone joined in. We try different sorts of meetings, with speakers alternating with members’ evenings.

Tonight it was members’ DIY. Our brief had been for each person to read from their favourite writing and, after our short responses, explain their choices.

We had a great evening, where the serious mingled with the hilarious, and where the presentation of dialogue (which some of us struggle with in our own writing) seemed effortlessly covered.

Starting us off well, Muriel Williamson offered part of Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsilver. A great deal of back-story was conveyed in a few words. Describing a young Tennessee woman’s change of heart returning from a planned lovers’ tryst on a mountain after a vision deterred her, was an example... ‘All there the life she’d left for dead. Nothing had changed and yet it all had.’ ‘The bled out luck’ of a neighbouring dried-up peach orchard mirrored the young woman’s life.

Two members read from their own work. One shared a well-crafted poem about the death of Saddam Hussein. Rita Barsby chose a verse she’d had returned from a competition complete with negative comments. The judge had failed to understand a poem the rest of us thought was clearly about road kill, involving both human injury and injury of smaller animals.

The greatest hilarity of the evening came with Lesley Horton’s offering. She gave us plenty of dialogue from Derek Longdon’s Lost For Words, as the author described a situation comedy concerning meeting his mother on an escalator in a shopping centre, then describing the events involved when she spilt yogurt on the escalator and created chaos.

Lesley struggled to read it with a straight face, and the words and the dialogue provided good Northern humour for us all.

Andy Garner read about a 100-year-old man, who climbed out of the window of his old people’s home when others were getting ready to celebrate on his birthday, from a book by Jonas Jonasson.

By contrast, life in Eastwood, Nottingham, was acutely conveyed in DH Lawrence’s Sons And Lovers, as Sue read out the dialogue where Mr Morell left Mrs Morell threatening “to make her pay for this”. In the subsequent dialogue with her son, the reflections of Mrs Morell reveal much about her more rational character.

Life ebbing away was well described in Peter Godwin’s account as a child in Zimbabwe (read by John Roberts), where Mr Boshop died. The whole dying process was seen through the child’s eyes and provided a clear writing perspective.

The rag and bone shop under the Accrington viaduct was a superbly detailed description shared by Barbara Calton from Jeanette Winterton’s recent autobiography. King Crow, by Michael Stewart, provided another fast-moving account of a rite of passage when boy meets girl. We heard a moving account of a young man’s relationship with birds from Douglas Copeland’s account of Canada Geese, and a story about a rat – Fermin by Sam Savage.

These were just a selection from an evening that encompassed poems, an historical novel and a page-turning tale of Wilbur Smith’s. It was an evening that gave aspiring writers much to emulate.

We have a breather at 7.30pm on Tuesday (September 10) while we listen to James Nash read his poetry, and we share our own work on October 8.