Yorkshire Writers' Lunch

 If you look online, there are loads of ‘things you should do before … such as the National Trust’s list for children under eleven and three-quarters. All very laudable, like getting to know a tree, camping, play conkers (with due regard to Health & Safety), play Pooh sticks and skim stones (loved doing that, before and after the above age). Adults are also given instructions. Lists of twenty things you are expected to do before reaching the old age of twenty, and so on up the decades – thirty items before age thirty, fifty before your half century. The problem is that the older you get, the more things you have to do and that does not suit my notion of growing old gracefully. I prefer the ‘three score years and ten’ version. Instead of matching the items to years, work backwards: 70 things to do before you’re 10 60 things to do before you’re 20 50 things to do before you’re 30 and so on until you get to 10 things to do before you’re 70 This is much more

  ‘Bonjour,’ says Beret, to a passing stranger, As he flaneurs along the Seine embankment, Happy to have no itinerary Just to follow his nose And see what turns up. A bright orange beret, nothing dull, for him, Worn at such a jaunty angle You’d swear it would slip off. But even as the breeze blows off Pont Neuf, Beret stays in position, defying gravity, cocking a snook. *** Baseball Cap, worn backwards, the essence of cool, Or maybe not! On her way to a gig, She stares through the tube window into the darkness of the tunnel, The brightness of the stations, Counting down the stops, Her barely moving fingers running through the keyboard riffs Of their new number. Jazz funk the music world calls it, But she dislikes genres and refuses to be pigeonholed. At Covent Garden, she rises to the surface, Tall, erect, composed, shades on, Baseball Cap minutely adjusted, And glides towards the venue, Knowing her trusty roadies will have everything rea