Remember back in the day when we used to do 'writing exercises'? Well, guess what, we did one last night - I know!

Well I must admit that initially the signs weren't looking good for tonight - illness and family commitments had cut a swathe through our ranks, or so it seemed. I sat in the room not expecting anyone to turn up...then five people arrived and we had a functioning group, phew. We critiqued a children's story, a poem and a short story and then repaired to the pub to talk about punctuation, bad writing, good writing, ghosts and Kindles. Alistair sported a very striking hat because it was his birthday and because you weren't there, you missed the opportunity to see Alistair's hat - it's too late now, he is off to South Africa for a while, we will miss him. We also have a new member - not the new member from last week, but a new new member, we hope she comes back, we liked her and we liked her writing - fingers crossed...

I HATE Italo Calvino.

Anyway, it's cold... it's colder than a politician's heart, it's so cold that the local flasher was caught describing himself to women, it was so cold the lawyers had their hands in their own pockets... etc, etc...

We were not expecting many people but five hardy souls turned up, including a new poet. The poet had spoken about how he had tried various other writers' groups, so when he read out, instead of being really nice and positive as even the most acid-tongued of are when a new person reads out for the first time, we had to make sure that our feedback was more insightful that whatever he had from other groups - so we gave it to him. We hope he comes back!

So there was poetry from the new member and only one other piece of prose, but we read, listened and vivisected til 9.20pm.

After the pub, this happened:

Last night we had a free style beat poem, an empty shampoo bottle, some exquisite ballet dancing and an extremely unusual school, and free sandwiches in the pub. Excellent start to the year I'd say.

We kicked off 2012 with an all female group, although before we started there were some pithy comments via his mobile from Bilal about the submissions for his online book ( stand by for feedback folks - or should that be, take cover)

We heard further extracts from Mary and Lily's books both of which are excellent and bode well for the standard of writing in 2012 and then we went down the pub. Within minutes of us arriving, the pub was compeletely deserted - was it something we said?

Mary is off to her editing course, which unfortunately clashes with wgwg so we won't be seeing her for a while. We wish her well for the course - we will miss you Mary, don't forget to come back to us!

Next meeting January 19th - see you there.

There were only 5 of us, but the four readings and feedback took nearly the whole two hours. It was good to be able to delve deeply.

The first session in 2012 is 5 Jan. Have a good Xmas and happy new year and all that jazz...

So, our dastardly plan has worked, we know that because twelve people turned up on Thursday night, proving that absence makes the heart grow fonder eh? A great night ensued, there was so much good work read out, and Lily is back - Hurrah! That was a good night people.