In Our Own Write – January 2022

I am a bewildered apprentice convenor for the newly formed overspill from the main creative writing group. It is hard to actually say much when we are in the very early stages although we have gelled amazingly well. Three of us met for the second time and we had another participant who came along to see whether she wanted to join. Apologies from a fifth member.

Three of us had written about Christmas customs in a country we know well. We were transported to the Canary Islands where the main square in the town where Eileen lived was transformed into Bethlehem complete with the manger and sad looking donkeys.

Then on to Germany where an old lady reminisced about the Christmases of her childhood with traditional nutcrackers, Christmas angels, advent wreaths and stollen.

Further north we then went to Sweden where everything stops on Christmas Eve at 3 pm for the nation to be glued to their TV screens to watch a montage of Disney cartoons (the same ones every year), before sitting down to a smorgasbord of smoked lamb and pickled herring.

Our fourth member, Marion,  read out a very evocative description of a local market where she used to live in France. You could virtually see and smell the stalls of fresh vegetables and flowers and wonder at the expertise of the hat maker whose creations rivalled an upmarket boutique.

Our next meeting will be on Monday 10th January where we will be reading out a story developed from newspaper headlines selected at random. Each session we will also hope to improve our writing technique by discussion and exercises.

Travina White, Convenor