Writers Groups are so Supportive and Helpful.

 I've been in five different writing groups over the past 30 years. All have been friendly and encouraging, some have been more helpful on a practical level than others but all were/are supportive. I didn't realise how lonely writing is as an activity before I joined my first group, probably 30 years ago. I've moved on but I still remember some of the others involved, and I have a novel by the group leader, James Waddington. 

As a solitary writer long before I joined my first group, in the mid 1990's, it was terrifying sharing my words with others for the first time. Any attempts to read my work to family or friends were largely greeted with indifference. The attitude seemed to be, why couldn't I have a more interesting hobby? Archery maybe, or pottery, baking and anyway if I liked words so much shouldn't I be interested in crosswords? Or playing computer games with my children. I tried all those, some with more conviction than others, but nothing replaced the stories and characters in my head, keening and thumping to get out.

In a writers' group, there are people who can understand this. People who know you need to leave others watching Breaking Bad or playing Warhammer and go elsewhere to tackle your own battles with pen and paper or Microsoft Word. 

So my current writers' group, The St Leonards Writers, help me share my work, stimulate new ideas and, now I'm seven years in, are giving me the opportunity to encourage other writers who are newer to sharing their love of this engrossing and, to normal people, crazy activity. 

Starting a new story, but where's it going?

I've written the opening for a new story,  I've got plenty of details to fill it out  with but I don't know where it's going, not yet. No plot, you see! Ideas sometimes stall completely, I hope this isn't one of those.

Berlin Bear  (working title)

He had always been her favourite thing. He was black, neatly carved and had little white eyes and straight white teeth inside his open mouth. He walked along in a stately manner and was about as tall as Lydia’s mum’s blue tea caddy, and as long as her brother’s orange book with a penguin on it. He seemed quite small, for a bear.

Lydia was four, she wasn’t allowed to touch the bear, it had been her grandpa’s, he’d brought it back from Germany after the war. The bear lived on the shelf over the coal fire in their sitting room. When Lydia asked what his name was, her dad put his head on one side and said he wasn’t sure. Her mum came with a mug of tea for Dad and milk for Lydia, so she asked Mum. 

‘Sit down and don’t spill your milk,’ Mum said. Lydia sat on the little green stool that Dad sometimes put his feet up on, and she sipped her milk.

‘But what’s his name?’ She asked again.

Mum smiled. ‘Grandpa brought it back from Berlin,’ she said. ‘So I suppose that’s its name. Berlin.’

Much later, by the time Berlin Bear took in pride of place on Lydia’s retro modular shelving unit in her Fulham flat, she had learned that he wasn’t from Berlin, or even from Germany. He was carved in Brienz, the small Swiss village that had become famous for its wood carving. Berlin was a black forest carved bear, although he wasn’t from the Black Forest either, that was 270 kilometres to the north of Brienz.

It had started with the wooden bear, her collection of wooden animals, then stone animals, then things to display her animals on, hence her modular shelving. It was the first non-new item she’d bought for her flat. It wasn’t antique, although she had found it in an antiques centre and mid-century modern hadn’t yet become expensive on the vintage market.

She’d originally started furnishing her flat with five-hundred pounds, buying new things. By the time she’d got the essentials, a fridge, a bed, duvet, curtains and a cooker, there wasn’t much of her five-hundred pounds left. Forty-seven pounds and fifty-four pence to be precise. New furniture was out of the question. A junk shop on the corner opposite had sold her a red Formica topped table and two matching plastic seated chairs for twenty quid and a colleague at work gave her two sheepskin rugs which she claimed had made her children sneeze, and an old, not very clean couch, which Lydia had scrubbed with carpet shampoo, but still smelt vaguely of children and dogs. 

Her collection had stayed in boxes for years, until one Friday she saw, in the window of the Charlton antiques centre, another Black Forest bear. She went back the next day and bought it, never mind that it was seventy quid. The modular shelving unit it was sitting on was half the price, but she’d have to pay for delivery.

Jamie, the guy who’d delivered it, plus a green leather couch she’d seen later and added to her shopping list, was very happy to assemble the shelving for her. He told her the shelving was called Ladderax, from the sixties, very soon it would be considered retro, she was ahead of the trend. He said he’d only let her buy it because he needed the floorspace for a Regency bookcase which was worth thousands rather than hundreds. 

Jamie also said her flat looked a bit bare, he suggested she could buy more from the Charlton Antiques Centre. She put her new bear on the shelving and told him she had more, she pulled out the boxes containing her collection. He was keen to see what she had and she became excited too, finding things she’d forgotten about.  He helped her to unpack and arrange her animals. He was enthusiastic when she unwrapped from its newspaper nest a stone animal she had regretted buying when she was sixteen, because it was so heavy and she’d had to carry it home on the bus.

‘Do you know what this is?’ he asked her.

‘I think it’s a whale. I found it in a junk shop ten years ago,’ she said.

‘It is nice.’ He turned the piece around in his hands, examining it from all angles. ‘You’ve got a good eye. Not a whale though, it’s an Inuit carved walrus. See, the tusks?’ He pointed to parallel carved grooves down the chest of the beast and she could see it, of course it was a walrus, she just hadn’t looked hard enough.

  

The Guardians by John Grisham - book review

*** 

Well enough written as you'd always expect with John Grisham. The Guardians contains two of his gruesome scenes, although the first is the worst. I don't read his books very often, I have an increasingly delicate constitution!

The Guardians are a crusading group whose aim is to help wrongly convicted prisoners who are serving serving life sentences or worse, sitting on death row. Their tally of victories stands at eight, there are twenty more men and women on their list who need saving.

If the author never wrote about anything else he'd have twenty more stories here!

Good stuff, but only three stars because I wouldn't read The Guardians again.

Tell Him Billy Fry Sent You - A scene from 'Blue Lynx' my novel (work in progress)

I like to write in scenes. It's always the connecting narrative that is hard work.   

 Protagonist Manda Bailey is trying to organise her four friends, who are an aspiring rock band, into actually recording an album. 

                                                        ____________________

Chapter 7 - Tell him Billy Fry sent you 

The next day I got the 136 bus to Lewisham, to see Billy Fry at the Garage Studio. It had been good enough for our first single, so why not for an album? Yes it was a garage, but the studio equipment was reasonably good, or at least Matt and Dibs thought so, although the building was ramshackle, its acoustics were poor according to Andy. Rick hadn’t said much and I soon found out why. I thought all I had to do was talk nicely to Billy Fry to get round him.

         I was a bit shocked by how he looked, he had always been quite solid and cheerful, but I hadn’t seen him for a few months and he’d lost weight, he looked about twenty years older. I’d never realised he was ill, he probably had been for a while. He coughed as he smoked and I did remember that he’d always had a cough. When he offered me a cigarette, I said no thanks.

Billy Fry told me he was thinking of closing the studio down, he didn’t have the stamina to run the place anymore and probably needed to sell some kit to pay debts. That made me angry when I thought how the guys hadn’t paid him for using the place for band practice, maybe they hadn’t even coughed up for the single. I didn’t ask him in case he expected me to find the money, I just said something vague but sympathetic. We drank instant coffee while he told me about his illness, in a bit more detail than I wanted. He dug out some biscuits, custard creams, and he nattered on about music, telling me he was a jazz saxophonist although he didn’t play anymore because of his lungs. He’d accompanied a lot of bands in the sixties. I asked who and he dropped a few names, rock bands and soul singers as well as jazz. Then he came out with something that encouraged me.

‘Your lot, Blue Lynx, stupid name that, sounds like aftershave! But you know something gal, they’re quite good. They got potential!’

I was amazed. We’d all known Billy was into jazz and I never thought he’d listened to our rock band while we were mucking about in his studio, he wasn’t even there very often, or not when we were. Rick had somehow got hold of a key.

‘We just finished a tour,’ I told Billy. ‘It went all right, Blue Lynx are great live.’

‘That don’t surprise me, gal, there’s talent there. Wish I were twenty years younger, I might come along one night.’

‘Thanks, Billy, that’s great. I’ll tell them you said that.’

‘Don’t do that, gal! You’ll give that Rick Brandon ideas. He already thinks he’s Jeff bloody Beck and he bloody well ain’t, pardon my French!’

               ‘Well, I think they’re great,’ I said and he snorted. ‘Billy, listen! I know you’ve got the experience, you worked with so many great artists. What you think of them is more important than what I think.’

‘Anyways, I didn’t say they’re great,’ he lit a cigarette from his previous stub, ‘what I said were, there’s talent. Dibs is quite something and that guy Andy. He don’t say so much as his bleeding brother, but when he does his ideas are spot on and he understands the music.’

‘What about Matt?’

‘He’s a drummer, what can I say,’ he shrugged. ‘They got their own thing. I know you been going out with him gal, but he’s a bit average. He could improve I expect, but he don’t work hard enough. Drummers need to work hard.’

‘I’m going to finish with Matt anyway,’ I said, not quite sure why I was telling him. Matt always claimed he did work hard.

‘That’d be a shame,’ Billy looked sideways at me, or rather at my chest.

‘Why do you say that?’ I hoped he’d get my defiant tone, I was feeling uncomfortable, on my own here with this old bloke almost leering at me.

‘That band needs you!’ He said, surprising me again. ‘They do!’ He nodded. ‘I’ve watched you gal, they needs you to sort them out.’

I swallowed the creepy feeling and I said, ‘That’s why I’m here Billy. They need you more than me. They’ve actually all agreed, the next thing to do is make an album.’

‘They have, have they.’ It wasn’t a question, I could see him thinking. He was sitting in a tatty armchair, I was perched on a drum stool, but he hauled himself up.

‘Just you stay there, gal, I won’t be a mo,’ he brushed past me, a bit too close, then he disappeared into the tiny back room that was his office. He came back a few minutes later with two bits of paper.

‘Give that to Ricky bloody Blackmore or whoever he thinks he is this week,’ he handed me the first paper, ‘Seeing as how he imagines he’s the band leader.’ I read, astonished. It was a bill for the use of the Garage Studio.

‘They owe you four grand?’ I said.

‘I may have rounded it up a bit,’ he wobbled his hand sideways, ‘That’s interest, you know. You can get them to pay me when the album charts. Or pay my missus if I’ve copped it.’

I bit my lip, feeling guilty.

‘And this one’s for you, gal.’ He gave me the second bit of paper. ‘There’s three studios there. They’d all do you better for recording a decent album than this old dump.’ He tapped the paper with a tobacco-stained finger. ‘I’d start with Mushroom Studios if was you.’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll give that to Rick too.’

‘No don’t do that,’ Billy shook his head impatiently, he was staring at me again. ‘I said it’s for you, get it? That Rick’s so full of himself, he’s a bleedin’ twat. He won’t get in the door at Mushroom and you can tell him he won’t get through my door neither, not with that key he half-inched, I changed the bloody lock.’

‘Rick actually stole a key?’ I could believe it but it still made me fume.

‘Not your problem, gal,’ he said, ‘But someone needs to sort that band out and you got the nous for that job. Now you gotta find your gumption, I reckon you got some. Just you put on a pretty frock and go talk to Bernie Coulter at Mushroom. He looks like the most tattiest roadie you ever met but he’s got his head screwed on, like you have. He’s a good producer an’ all, and that’s what your band needs. Talk to Bernie, tell him Billy Fry sent you.’ 

When I left Billy Fry to lock up his studio, I felt a bit sorry for him but I was amazed at what he’d said, that I had nous and gumption and the band needed me. But I didn’t have the gumption to just hand that bill to Rick. The first chance I got, I shoved it in his guitar case under some sheet music and hoped he wouldn’t realise how it got there. 

Reading Habits 2025

 

Sue's Reviews > None of This Is True

None of This Is True
by 

Lisa Jewell (Goodreads Author)

Sue's review 

Crikey! Unputdownable, I read it in twelve hours, with a few hours of sleep in the somewhere. What happened? I still don't quite know... Five stars anyway.

*****

For Earth Day 22 April 2025 - a poem

 Passenger Pigeon

You dwelt in the vastness of the sky

with no fear of the hungry eagle

he couldn’t harm you in your millions.

 

You swarmed across the wild prairies

with no fear of the mighty bison

those couldn’t harm you in your millions.

 

You  soared over the Rocky Mountains

with no fear of the grey wolf packs

they couldn’t harm you in your millions.

 

You  nested in the red oak trees

with no fear of the long-legged bobcat,

she couldn’t harm you in your millions.

 

You  flapped above people’s villages

with no fear of the families in their tepees,

these couldn’t harm you in your millions.

 

You  flocked above the steaming railroads

with no fear of the well-armed hunter

he destroyed you, all of your millions.

*

The Passenger pigeon was once thought to be the most numerous bird on earth. The last one of their species died in Cincinnati Zoo in 1912.  Humans had named her Martha.

All About the Dogs - my latest short story

 (set on't Yorkshire Moors, with a hint of Royston Vasey)

Eight years being the time since my partner, Geoffrey, vanished, I’ve decided to have him declared dead. I’m told you can do it, as nobody’s heard from him for more than seven years.

Three weeks after his vanishing, I’d been to police and reported him missing, because I were worried. I weren’t actually much worried about Geoffrey. I were more concerned for the dogs, all three being a bit under the weather after something they’d eaten up on the moor and I weren’t sure how much the vet’s bill would be.

Me and Geoffrey had chosen the three dogs for their wild looks. Mackeson's a brownish border collier crossed with god knows what, he's powerful jaws for a collie. Spitz is a big boy, looking like a huge, grey, shaggy bear with great long legs and a curling tail. Geoffrey said he could be a shih tzu great Dane cross, but I think he were joking. I always reckoned that would be physically impossible, Spitz must be something like a wolfhound and mountain dog cross. The third dog, Delilah, has massive black curls and fetches half the moorland home tangled in them. She's possibly a giant cockapoo, if you look at her through squinting eyes.

They were all rescues, of course, Spitz being the oldest. The vet reckons he’s now about eleven, which he says is a good age for such a large dog. The others were half-grown pups when we got them a year or so before Geoffrey's disappearance. We’d agreed Spitz needed company especially as we were both out working, he’d been a bit destructive, demolishing shoes, doors, two sofas and a stray cat, we’d found that half eaten in the front garden. Of course Geoffrey were soft on dogs, he insisted on blaming foxes. Some people might have believed him, but I knew who’d come in with cat’s tail in his mouth.

Geoffrey loved to walk with all three dogs on his free days. Summer or winter, they’d all ramble for miles on the moors and if we were lucky, Geoffrey would come home with a few rabbits or game birds in his kitbag. Once he arrived with a lamb in the bag, he said Spitz had only spooked it and made it run, he wasn’t deliberately hunting it. Geoffrey was in denial.