July 2023 Supplementary Meeting Minutes

credit Kath Norgrove

Thursday 13th July 2023 at 7pm

The Crown, Bridgnorth High Street

Chair: Adam

Present: Adam, Alex, Irena, Marie (scribe)

Apologies: Jennie, Sue, Liz, Tony H., Tony T.

This was a good meeting as we were able to stay until 10 but we left a few minutes earlier. The room was quiet – the sound from the music speakers downstairs didn’t penetrate the thick door to the room. The staff were welcoming and pleasant.

Adam started us off with a warmer with the topic of fossils. We could base our writing on fact or fiction.

Marie wrote about a houseowner removing the render on their 200-year-old house, constructed in sandstone. Several interesting fossils were found. The local palaeontology society came to look and offered five times the house’s value, as they wanted to dismantle it and take away the stones with fossils. This was accepted and the owners bought a huge house and banked some money.

Alex read a piece about a stony Welsh beach, a green stone and a blast of wind sent the stone into the frothy sea.

Irena wrote about going on a walk along cliffs and past coves, with the wind and the sea surrounding her. In one inviting cove ahead, she discovered a fossil with a big bend in it, which was an enormous spine of a creature. Her amazement and awe rooted her to the spot.

Adam read out The Shell, with a fossil embedded in sediment, buried for many aeons. He ran his fingers over depressions, feeling the indentations of the creature.

Adam read out the homework due for the next meeting - The Walk Forest Pyramid, based in Northumberland national park. Tom drove over to Hadrian’s wall and saw a metallic object at the side of the road. It was pyramid-shaped and about 7 feet high. It was so perfect he felt it couldn’t be manufactured in this world. A 4 x 4 driven by a woman arrived, then she carried on. Tom saw her again in a pub and while chatting they revealed that he was an archaeologist, and she was an anthropologist. This is unfinished.

Alex wrote Wedded Bliss, a comical dialogue. Deborah’s husband was a persistent thief and couldn’t understand why she was so ungrateful with the numerous expensive items he had stolen for her, and that she didn’t want him to rob a bank. Tony decided he wanted a divorce citing her unreasonable behaviour.

Irena told us she has submitted poems to the competition King Lear for over 60s.

She is editing a friend’s science fiction novel and read an extract about a future world taken over by giant mechanical spiders in the voice of the main protagonist – 18-year-old Trent.

Adam then set us a word maze:

Marie read about Tanya and Clare who were on day three of their canal boat holiday. Wales was as wet as usual, the landscape unrelentingly wet and green and one of them fell in the canal.

Irena read  a childhood memory of she and her friends climbing into a tree, sitting on a large branch and eating sandwiches. Being very quiet, they threw balloon bombs filled with soil, sherbet and rotting eggs onto unsuspecting passers-by below.

Alex wrote a fantasy about Marion looking into a tree with lots of birds, walking through a wood and finding an egg at the base of a tree. A pixie appeared and told her off for being there before, but she felt she had never been there before.

Adam wrote All Good Things. He remembered being somewhere with a childhood friend and going to a cake shop to buy cakes with smarties on top.

The next meeting is at Peepo's on Tuesday 25^th July at 7pm

The following meeting is at The Crown on Thursday 10^th August at 7pm. If anyone parks in the car park behind, they must input their numberplate into the machine at the end of the bar or they will receive a hefty parking fine. There is nothing the staff can do if you don’t enter your numberplate.