Yorkshire Writers' Lunch

A solitary woman. The same clothes each week, plain and grey. Never a smile on her thin, pale lips. In the crook of her arm, a black handbag, always flat and empty: no secrets bulging in its cheap frame. Father McKenzie knew her name from the first day she came to Mass but had never said it aloud. If she had any family or relatives they were never mentioned. Even when the bombs had fallen further down the road in ’42, she still slipped quietly into and out of her usual pew, unobserved, leaving without seeking conversation. One of the many lonely people of that City, he had thought.   For more than 20 years she had approached the altar with the same number of steps, then a pause, a dip, her pink, dry tongue visible for the shortest time. Then her return to the back of the church away from the rest of the worshippers.   It was many years before her soft voice with its Scouse accent slipped through the screen into his ears. Words unexpected and shocking, spilling into the space b

  Codewords. You might have seen these puzzles in the newspaper. You might be a fan. A crossword grid … but no clues. All the white squares are numbered. Each of the numbers, 1 to 26, stands for one of the letters in the alphabet. Your task is to discover each letter, And complete each word on the grid.   I’m sitting in my favourite seat, slipper-boots on, pen poised, Night Tracks on the radio, Mostly music I’ve never heard before, nothing too frantic or noisy. A peeled and sliced apple ready to eat. First step. The setter provides two letters to start you off. Tonight, it’s I and H and there are a few of each. I fill these letters in on the grid, double-checking I haven’t missed any.   Then the scrutiny begins. Where are the doubles? Where might the E’s be? There’s usually a lot of them. (But then there might also be a lot of S’s!) I search the grid for a frequently occurring number, And spot an eight-letter word with the second, fourth and six