Yorkshire Writers' Lunch

I attend a creative writing class in Leeds and am writing a novel. It is based on the life of a family who have a child with profound and multiple learning difficulties. Much of the content will be humorous, the following not so much so. It may or may not form part of the book...      I’d noticed her in Home Bargains a few minutes earlier. She had that tough look about her  - a great big tattoo across her neck. She reminded me of the girl with the dragon tattoo but without the good looks. I can’t begin to tell you how many piercings she had in unsuitable locations. She had a surly ‘don’t you cross me’ air surrounding her. All the shoppers were giving her a wide berth. I wouldn’t swear to it in court but I’m pretty sure I saw her putting an extra large bag of Haribos inside her coat.      Avoiding the Sky man, the Help for Heroes collecting tin and averting my eyes from the strange phenomenon of ‘threading’, I pushed Ruby down to the cheap bookshop. It’s useful having Ruby with yo

I pass them daily, two old maids in a field named Magic and Paris. Can it be my moods and their bearing are synchronised with each season? Summer, contented, they swish tails on close cropped grass, disdainful of dogs, tolerant of puppies. In autumn, the mournful season, they loom vastly from the fog like lorries on the M62. Huddled in winter, the beasts of the field close ranks, rugged-up, muttering and stamping. But in spring, bright spring, reminded of girlish madness, they burst wildly through hawthorn hedges.

  St Dynwen's Church, LLanddwyn Island, Anglesey, Wales.                     Ruined buildings excite me. I can feel the presence of those who have gone before. I touch the stone and I feel an energy that logic alone couldn't begin to explain. I peer through a narrow arched window and wonder who else has seen that view. I climb crumbling stairs that lead to nowhere, adding my footsteps to the thousands of others who have worn smooth hollows into the stone. I touch a pillar and feel like my hand is reaching down through the centuries, connecting with those who were once here. I talk to them, like a madwoman, saying 'I know you're there' and I believe they can hear me. It's time to go. I have to tear myself away. I feel that if I could stay a little longer, they would talk to me and tell me all their secrets. I'm stirred up for days afterwards, like I've been a vessel through which they've tried to

It’s October already, and we are well into the new school term. At just nine and seven, the boys are already bringing home their fair share of homework, and like all children, there is always something they would rather be doing. It’s my job, then, to inspire them to do it. Not an easy task. This week, William brought home a poem with some questions to complete. The poem was a good one, (“Old Flyer” by Nick Toczek– look it up), but William was not enthused. Something about the arrangement of the words on the page, the stanzas, the rhyming, seemed to intimidate him, which manifested itself in sullen uncooperativeness and mutterings about it being a “stupid poem”.  To coax him along I suggested he look at one of the easier questions, about identifying similes.  This prompted an argument about whether a simile can include “than,” as well as “like” and “as”. Here, my English Literature Masters Degree cut no ice with William, and he was only persuaded when we consulted