Yorkshire Writers' Lunch

I flicked quickly through the untidy pages of crossings-out, garish ink and poor writing, eager to replace them with entries reflecting my family and friends. The old book symbolised those early years when we started out together. A rush of new names, new faces, growing families. Divorce and distance had created casualties along the way. Now I wanted to start afresh. There was a pile of letters and notes at my elbow which I had saved from the Christmas cards, each containing some change, news of illness, new addresses for those who had downsized or moved nearer to family, leaving behind old familiar house names. I copied out the address of a distant cousin onto a new page of B’s. The house name as beautiful as the Arts and Craft house it described.             ‘Do you remember that house?’ Her face turned towards me and I saw her smile.             ‘Yes, lovely place. ...

  It was many years since I had visited the ancient Pilgrim City. I was in the shadows of the great Cathedral where merchants and street vendors competed for attention with their cacophony of ringing voices and shrill cries. Shoppers nudged together to reach for vegetables and fruit set out on hawkers’ barrows.  Further on, under the painted sign of a black cow, a butcher stood with his cleaver aloft, a blood-spattered apron tied around his large belly. Next door, a sign above the fishmonger’s, showed a vivid, aquamarine sea and its harvest of orange crabs, silver-scaled fish and oysters: a picture far removed from my memories of the drab, grey, shifting sands and sea of the Kent coastline. My eyes fell from the sign to the queue at the fish counter and that was when I saw him. A long, thin man, his knees slightly bent as if in the act of supplication. As I stared at him, I saw him stretch out a lank hand with thin, pale fingers that closed around the parcel of wet fish he had...

  Home is where the heart is , a phrase that is constantly proving to be true, and since we moved, this old house from the 1850s, has many stories to tell within its thick stone walls. From the sturdy servant bells in the kitchen, and grand focal-point fireplaces to the vast array of different period windows, there’ a tale unfolding in every corner. This house has been a tug of war, since we fell in love with it this time last year, it took eight of the longest months to finally call it our own and cross the threshold in August. Our emotions raged from excitement to hope, frustration to panic, before finally our veins were flooded with sheer relief. We’d invested our hearts at an early stage, myself especially and I simply couldn’t imagine losing it after all these months of back-and-forth negotiations and being stuck in a chain, but it came dangerously close! But wow was it worth it, when we originally viewed it, it was Winter, and dark. The trees in the garden were stripped a...

  My uncle, Amos Oddy, was dying, though he didn’t know it. Yet. Everyone around him knew it and that was the problem. How do you convince someone to write their will, which you know will be needed sooner rather than later, when they think they’re invincible? ‘ I’ll sort it,’ Aunty Gilly said. ‘He’s my brother and I remember how difficult it was when grandma died intestate. That will get him started.’ It probably would, but she’ll make sure he started with her as the first and main beneficiary. Her daughter, Agnes, was just as bad. ‘ I think he should see a solicitor straight away. Mine is very good. I’ll make an appointment for him,’ she said. Amos’s other nephew, Bill, intended to take him round the animal home and discuss leaving bequests to charity in wills, while Bill’s brother, Max, wanted to have a real ‘heart-to-heart’ with his uncle and explain how upset they’d all be at the time and how much easier he’d make it for all his loved ones if he just thought about how to di...

Cordelia McArthur was the only child of Margaret and Henry Soames, both of whom worked in Government departments in the sprawling offices of Whitehall. They, like most other Whitehall-ers in their plain dress sense, travelled in from the suburbs every weekday along with thousands of others who seemed to walk quickly, as if they were in competition, to reach their respective departments first. They had married in their late thirties six weeks after meeting at a seminar called “The Disappearing Commonwealth”. They were passionate about their work which they “took home” and were somewhat surprised when Margaret fell pregnant. As the pregnancy progressed, Margaret bloomed, became talkative and interested in things that she had never been. Towards the end of her term, having at that juncture left her job, she began suffering from bouts of fainting and sickness. Her doctor, a friend of the family, insisted she completed her time in hospital in order that medical staff could keep an eye on ...

  At school, they’d give you a blue monthly report if you had credits and no debits. In other words – good behaviour and good work. If you had any of those pesky debits, it was a white report! But they’d sneak in the debits. Neglect of instructions was the sneakiest – and for me, the commonest. At the age of twelve I wasn’t really sure what the phrase meant, but it kept recurring. You’d think I’d have learnt my lesson. The satnav just told me to turn right. I didn’t. Ignore satnav, engage brain. Haven’t been in this town for years, but I still know best. The road is completely unfamiliar. It feels like one of those dreams where you start off knowing where you are. Then the familiarity dissolves and you’re in a strange land. I contemplate a U-turn, but as that would be admitting defeat, I press on. The rain starts again, wipers follow suit, street lights come on, twilight. The edge of town already? How can that be? Fields and trees begin to push their way forward. Thin...

Harriet rummaged through the spice jars, frowning impatiently when her fingers didn’t land immediately on the one she wanted. “Rosie, next time you cook, put these jars back properly!” She exclaimed crossly.   “You know I have to have them in order so I can find stuff!” “Mum, they’re better stored alphabetically, much more logical,” sighed Rosie.   “Basil doesn’t go next to oregano or marjoram.” “It makes sense to me , and it’s luckier to group them according to recipe,” Harriet mumbled absentmindedly, as she painstakingly re-organised the cupboard.   She sent a silent prayer to the Goddess she believed in, apologising for her daughter’s ignorance. Rosie studied her mum, trying to conceal her concern and - let’s face it - growing impatience and unease at her mother’s erratic behaviour, becoming more so with each anniversary. “Mum, let me make it this year, and I promise to put all the jars back as you like them - won’t spill anything either,” Rosie gently offere...

Some people might not have opened their doors to me were I not rich and famous.  But I was.  And they did.  I was welcomed everywhere I went.  People had seen me in films, at glamorous award ceremonies.   They had read about my failed relationships in gossip columns, they had seen the inside of my penthouse apartment in celebrity magazines, knew what perfume I wore and what I ate from the products I endorsed.  The wealthy and powerful invited me into their homes, to their parties, to their yachts.  They adored me with that air-kissing, over exaggerated, gushing sort of exuberance they called love.   And my fans worshipped me with that obsessive, grasping, over inquisitive attachment which they called love. All of that was before I came across the diary.   That yellowing, miniature scrap of a book which had lain hidden for so long in my uncle’s attic and which he had left to me in his will.   My uncle was a multi-millionaire businessman...

Sunday. 6 am. Sunny, freezing cold, too tired, why am I awake?! Tabby cat prowls the landscape of my bed, daintily stepping over me then head butts me into stroking her, purrs at ridiculous decibel levels for this quiet time of day. Yawning. Jaw-splitting. Unfolding unnatural bends in joints, popping and crackling like human cereal. Teenage son awake at the same unseemly hour, keen as mustard, willing to get out of his cosy nest, eagerness only for the prospect of the rare treat of an online tournament for his current game. Coffee. Lots… Rinse and repeat… Daughter, yawning and cold, demanding food, snuggling into blankets on sofa, still half asleep but won’t go back to bed. Ping. Football WhatsApp. Snow-covered pitches, back to bed…?! (*praying…) Unanswered prayers (a la Garth Brooks), freezing football pitch, sun/hail/wind/snow, 16 weeks without football, 22 stiff, clumsy, gangly teenagers, chocolate biccies at half time, travel-cup coffee cold too soon. Goals… Plural… Even a penalty ...

8.30 on Sunday morning, the house is almost silent; just the odd creak of it settling, getting comfortable in the early morning sunshine. Hubby’s gone for a motorbike ride, grown-up playing out with his childhood friend, and the children aren’t up yet. I’m writing in my front room, the window’s open behind me and the world’s waking up.  There’s birdsong, the voice of a neighbour talking to his wife, a car faintly in the distance. I can still taste the luscious toasted fruit bread I’ve just eaten, and the faint breeze through the window is sending little wafts of my mint tea in my direction. Our cat pops through the window, prowling and purring across the back of the sofa behind my head, her tail tickling my neck.  She slinks around the room, winding her way around chair legs before settling down, Sphinx-like, right in the middle of the room.  Why that particular spot? She often looks up at the ceiling from that viewpoint: is she simply hearing the children stirr...

The man from the house clearance company offered a price for the lot.  I’d stayed in the kitchen, trying to shut out the sound of doors closing, drawers opening, the creak of floorboards. Perhaps his offer of a tenner for the case was a sop to soften the impact of the deal he'd suggested.      There were two small, brown cases but that was until the holiday to Franco’s Spain in 1966 when one was lost to the Spanish baggage handlers.  I remembered my father’s anger at the thieves who, according to him, were out of the same mould of pickpockets and criminals as the nation’s leader.  ‘I lost two brand new corsets and a crimplene dress in that case’ my mother had added every time the loss was raised - usually when striking baggage handlers were in the news.  They didn’t go overseas again after that.  ‘We like it at Brid’ she had replied whenever there was talk of a holiday abroad. I opened the wardrobe door and it was still there, its ...

You, Today “How much again?” you ask me, pen poised. “£10.20,” I say distracted by noise. “What’s the date, did you say?”, still  sounding  like you. “10th of May, I believe.” It’s  me  who’s confused. You ask me the figures and date yet again Not even writing the cheque, and then I really do look, and see you anew -  You’re definitely altered - are you still  you ? The woman we loved, and thought that we knew  Is slowly dissolving, like smoke up a flue: Miniscule changes: the outside’s the same But now you’ve forgotten your own grandson’s name. Your smile doesn’t change, nor your deep love of cake; But these changes are cruel, they make my heart ache For the mum I remember, who taught me to cook, Who taught me there’s nothing so good as a book. Close my heart to the past, my eyes to next week, I’m with you  today . I won’t try to seek The mum I remember, the woman I knew: We’re together  tod...