Yorkshire Writers' Lunch

  “For Sale: baby bootees, never worn” Attributed to Ernest Hemingway, this ‘short story’ in six words always brings a sigh of sadness as we think of the poor parents who have lost a baby. But is this actually what it’s all about? Since the story is so vague, there are lots of other interpretations. Imagine two sets of grandparents, each determined to outdo the other. Each buy baby bootees. One chooses blue, the other chooses pink. Baby finally arrives and is … well, you can see what might happen. ‘ No, Douglas, we must be first with the bootees.’ ‘ But why pink ones, Mary? What if it’s –’ ‘ Our Sally is craving sweet things all the time and she’s carrying high. It will be a girl.’ ‘ Tom’s mother thinks –’ ‘ She has no idea what she’s talking about. She only has one child. I have had three! We will have a grandaughter, there’s no doubt about that.’ And so the bootees have to go, before Sally, Tom – and worst of all, his parents – find out the...

  (Part 1 was on the Blog on the 10 th April)    I wait a while and press the apartment bell again. The street is very quiet, apart from a man walking slowly along the opposite pavement, singing a Richard Anthony song, loudly and badly. How come I can remember the song, but not my own name? The door opens. A tall, slim woman stands there, long hair, long dress, long fingernails. A small tattoo on a bare forearm. It must be Simone, but the memory is hazy. She reaches out and kisses me on the cheek. Not on the lips. What does that mean?     “You don’t look good Liam! Where have you been?” Liam! That’s good to know. She makes no move to invite me inside. No lip-kissing, no invitation. There’s a message here.     “I got lost and ended up sleeping at the bus station,” I lie. “I have your key and wanted to bring it back … and to see you, naturally.” I’m struggling to talk in sentences. “Could I perhaps come in?”     “I...

The joke goes something like:   Q) What is so great about Sweden? A) I don’t know but the flag is a big plus.   Gerrit? At first I laughed but then I realised that the same could be applied to the England flag. That’s a big red plus. Doing a modicum of research then revealed that the flags of Denmark, Switzerland, Norway, Finland and Greece all feature a plus mark too. And thereby the novelty of the joke fades. Assessing these flags though, there are a few that wouldn’t technically fit the joke. Switzerland’s flag is a small plus. Greece’s flag is a small plus hemmed in by five blue lines or four white lines depending on which colour you think most dominates the space. They wouldn’t fit as replacements for Sweden in the joke. Denmark, Finland and Norway are all big pluses in the same way as Sweden but, let’s be honest here, are these actually plus signs? I would argue that they are crucifixes that have fallen to the left. The vertical line is not dead centre of...