February 2024 mid-month meeting minutes

 THE WRAP-UP

Day and date: Thursday, 8 February 2024

Venue: The Crown

Running time: 2:40 (7.15 pm till 9.55 pm)

Frontliners: Irena, me (Alex)

AWOL: Everyone else

Company commander: Me

“It Takes Two”

PROLOGUE

That’s right, word wranglers: two intrepid, hardcore HTW members braved monsoon conditions to participate in a most enjoyable, productive session. So… let’s get straight to it.

ACT I

Well, after a brief discussion about what constitutes prose poetry (see Rimbaud et al), it was time for the evening’s festivities to commence. Our first task was a Valentine’s Day-themed word maze. Irena’s words were roses and surprise, and mine were chocolates and restaurant.

In response to the above prompts, Irena wrote an entertaining piece of flash fiction about a woman who had been whisked away into a car by a stranger. I’m not going to divulge any more of its plot, because I’d really like Irena to share it with us via this blog, as I thought it worked really well; she has a knack for condensing a strong, intriguing plot into a short work.

And I devised a brief attempt at humour that featured a divorced woman who received a somewhat unappreciated gift.

ACT II

And then, as it was me in the chair once more, it was of course time for Pass the Piece. Tonight’s lead-in ran as follows:

Monday morning. 10 am. Mike was still in bed. Awake, yet snuggled beneath those soft, plush covers, basking in their cosy warmth-filled layers.

He looked at the clock again. 10.34. And work started at 9. Why wouldn’t he get up…?

This produced two comical continuations. Irena’s version was about a middle-aged man whose wife was now sleeping in another bedroom of the house, and mine focussed on the unadvised exploits of a fellah who just should’ve known better – at some point in the future, all being well, I shall pop it onto this blog.

INTERVAL

Irena read out her contribution to “That Magical Moment!” (this month’s homework task) – she’ll read it out again at the next meeting – followed by “Under a Shropshire sky”, a particularly imaginative and descriptive pastoral poem that earned her a commendation from a King Lear poetry competition. Superb!

I then orated an image-saturated, weather-themed sentimental poem that, upon reflection, was a bit too wordy. It’s always good to return to your work to give it a second appraisal.

Following that, Irena recited “Mac’s song”, a rhyming and highly rhythmic lurcher-inspired composition that she hopes our musical colleague Ann will turn into a song. It was very catchy!

ACT III

Our final assignment of the evening was entitled “The End Is Merely the Beginning”. The idea was to write something that concluded with the following line:

Five socks – all in one go!

In response to this, Irena wrote some more flash fiction – this version was about a group of friends that devised an ingenious way of plugging a radiator’s hole.

And I seemed to have truly inspired myself, as I spent quite some time scribbling out a piece that was also flash fiction. Mine was about “Bob”, a recently separated 42-year-old man whose life then took an unexpected turn for the better. Hmm… For some reason, there seemed to be a break-up theme running through this meeting. Ironic.

And that was it. Irena and I departed, leaving Adam and I to discuss boxing, cribbage and – no, wait – Adam wasn’t there…

EPILOGUE

The next HTW meeting will take place at Peepo, on Tuesday, 27 February, at 7 pm, and it will be chaired by our favourite law-conscious citizen, Ann.

The one after that will take place at the Crown, on Thursday, 14 March, at 7 pm. We don’t have a chairman for that one yet, so feel free to throw your hat into the ring by leaving a message underneath this wrap-up – failing that, it can be decided on the 27th.

And that’s yer lot, prose purists!

ALEX