Yorkshire Writers' Lunch

A roast beef sandwich with English mustard, Mum’s apple pie with tinned yellow custard. A burger with blue cheese and fries on the side, Bacon and black pudding, crisply fried.   A pot of pork dripping from Sunday’s roast With the brown jelly spread on Monday’s toast. Cold meat and salad for that day’s tea With piccalilli and onions and a mug of strong tea.   Donuts made on the harbour top, Covered in sugar and eaten still hot. Fish and chips on the front with paper and fork Then back to the car on the cliff walk.   Cheese from the market, wrapped in waxed paper, The best pork pies still warm from the baker. French crusty bread deliciously smelly, Salami and Prosciutto from the Italian Deli. Red Summer Pudding packed full of berries, A villa in France and sweet, sun-ripe cherries. Strawberries and Cream and Tarte au Citron, Cold Crème Brûlée and Vacherin aux Marrons.   A beachside restaurant and the catch of the day, ...

   The security lights shine through the blackout curtains.   Strange, this has never happened before.   I climb out of bed, and pulling the curtains aside, peer out into the inky blackness of the night.   I must have been mistaken, yet everything seemed so bright.   My eyes adjust to the darkness, and I shiver.        The wind is whistling through the trees, and a full moon suddenly appears, casting an eerie glow across the garden.   I silently watch and wait.   What is lurking in the dark shadows?   A lonesome fox approaches, staring straight at me, daring me to confront it, eyes bright and piercing, but I remain still, and it swaggers on its way, soon out of sight.   The moon disappears and darkness envelopes the garden once more.        I sigh and close the curtains, longing to return to my welcoming bed.   I gasp at the scene before me.   I am asleep, buried beneath the duvet...

  “There is nothing certain except that nothing is certain, And nothing more wretched than Man Or more arrogant.” Mattie had hated the school motto from the moment she first saw it. Her eyes were drawn to the stern, black letters, each a foot high, painted on the wall of the high-ceilinged dining hall.   She supposed they had been there for years and years. The plastered wall was cracked and patched under its whitewash, but the words were solid – forbidding and black as crows. She thought they must be repainted every year, ready to frighten a new intake of children. The motto was as stern and incomprehensible as the school itself, Mattie thought.   As she hurried up and down the bewildering staircases and along the endless corridors of identical wooden doors, the words whirled around in her mind in a tangle of double negatives. Did the motto mean that everything was certain, or that everything wasn’t? She felt like Alice in Wonderland, spinning as she fell down the rabbit...

      “Monsieur?” A tone of concern. I can hear his voice, but I’m face down on wet grass and can’t see the man. It takes a little time to get my limbs working. I turn and look up at him. He must be about sixty, balding, a small moustache which looks like it’s been painted on.     “Hello,” I say. In English.     “Are you OK? he asks. “Do you need a doctor?” Do I? There’s this feeling that I should stay away from any part of the system … that something has gone wrong … and until I find out what …     “No, thank you. I’m fine. Too much wine you know!” He looks doubtful. Perhaps I look bad but not in a drunk way. “But could you tell me where I am?”     “Sure. You must have had a good night! This is the Rue Maitre Albert. Notre Dame is just at the end of the street,” he says, turning to point the way. “With the rain overnight, it’s lucky you have a good waterproof.” A pity my jeans aren’t also waterp...

It was one of those late summer days when harvesting had started that I first visited Porthcurnick Beach. Wheat that had spilled from combined harvesters had mixed with sand and was thrown from our spoked wheels in golden clouds of dust on the dry, narrow roads . We were three. Two young women and one Labrador dog in a sports car, top down, our eyes shaded by flamboyant sunglasses. For five days the sun shone down on us from a cloudless sky and the blue English Channel lapped the Cornish coast in warm, watery folds.   This was The Roseland where the sea had nibbled sandy coves from the land and where headlands, bays and cliffs provided easy walking along the South West Coast Path. To the west was Portscatho, a former pilchard fishing village and to the east, past the coastguard lookout, was Nare Head and the path to Mevagissey and Fowey. In that shimmering heat we joined others on the path through the stile and down the steps to claim our daily space on a sandy beach awash with...

Ninety-three years ago, it was announced that a new planet had finally been found. Actually, it had been found some weeks earlier, but the Lowell Observatory kept it quiet. The planet had no name, hiding in the dark as if plotting some subterfuge. On the fourteenth of March, Venetia Burney, an eleven-year-old from Oxford suggested naming it after the God of the Underworld – Pluto. It was accepted, partly on the grounds that the first two letters were the same as the initials of the Observatory’s founder, Percival Lowell. In astrology, Pluto rules the subconscious, that which is hidden below, but also suggests renewal and rebirth. On the downside, it signifies an obsessive desire for power and control, as well as general destructiveness. So what happened in the decade after Pluto’s discovery? It began with Stock market crashes and general economic depression throughout the world. Unemployment in the UK reached two million, around 18% of the population. This was the time that...

  At the end of our weekend away, we came upon Edlingham Castle. We’d passed by the English Heritage sign a few times but it took us till Sunday to visit the glorious ruin.             Arriving at the main stone path, I realised that this encompassed the full castle grounds. Passing between the stubby walls of the barbican, I saw her reach out and run her fingers across the top, scattering gravel dust. I didn’t remark on this. We were the only ones on-site.             I shielded my eyes from the sun as I doubled back on the information panel. She kept walking through the courtyard, pulling out her camera. Apparently Edlingham Castle began life as a normal residence, later fortified as the English meddled with Scottish royalty. Three hundred years of social disruption, outright destruction and border raiding. Glancing up, I saw her skid over stray pebbles.  ...