Yorkshire Writers' Lunch

  Chaos rushed in with gleeful violence and pillaging. Cults arose like The Lunacy Markers, all demanding air time to shout down the overtired experts. Each night the Moon Clock went backwards and forwards to random times, with no discernible sequence. A probe was sent out to the satellite’s surface to hopefully disrupt any illusion or confirm a baffling truth.           Then one Monday midnight five and a half weeks later, the Moon Clock returned to twelve o’clock. Order restored, for one night at least. The Lunacy Markers insisted that this was the beginning of a new sequence, 'hitherto undreamt of'. Of course, they were obliquely announcing the end of the world. All the other cults fell in line, rushing to confirm the end times according to the Moon Clock. And yet, if you asked any one of these zealots, they couldn’t give clear justification of their doomsaying. The fact remained that no-one on Earth could comprehend the strange tim...

  It was Monday midnight when the moon revealed its new face. Apparently everyone in the world wasn’t looking in the time it took for a giant analogue clock to appear on the light side of the satellite.           Other news was eclipsed for the rest of the night and, when daylight came, journalists spent the next few hours quizzing lunar experts on if this was a stunt, who perpetrated it, how they managed such a feat and for what purpose. No organisation or creative collective laid genuine claim to the Moon Clock event. All anyone knew was that neither the big nor little hand had moved from twelve o’clock since the big reveal.           While some nations lost sight of the spectacle due to amassments of cloud and smog, the remaining clear-sighted countries confirmed that the moon still had a clock on its face. They also announced that the hands had now moved to the time five to ten. No-one...

  Oh, how I love my Rosie, she’s a super little car. Such great fun to drive around, as we travel near and far.   They said don’t buy electric, it will always let you down. But that is simply not the case, as we bob around the town.   It’s such a gorgeous colour, officially – Rose Gold. That’s why I call her Rosie, She’s shiny, bright and bold.   So, when you buy yourself a car, don’t care what others think. ‘Cos since I purchased Rosie, I’m simply in the pink.

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 th...

  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, ...

  Hi all!  This is my first post here. I wasn't sure what to put initially until I remembered a few snippets I wrote during a workshop at the Literature Festival recently. The workshop focused on setting, and how setting can build the atmosphere of your scenes. This is in three parts - and gets a little dark.  The front room was dark when Suzie got home. That wasn't surprising, but she was shocked to see full bottles of ale on the side table. So, Jim hadn't come home yet. If he had, those bottles would be empty. rolling on the floor abandoned. She took off her bag and set to work on dinner. Focused on chopping the vegetables, she jumped when the door suddenly shook with a loud banging.  "Damnit Suzie! You better open this door!" Thomas's voice resounded through the door and filled the small home. The landlord was impatient. His fist brayed on the door, the wood creaking under his fist. "Jim drank the rent money again and ran off. You better give me someth...

In case you haven’t already heard, there’s a new Scrabble game around. On one side, you can play the original version, complete with lonely but aggressive determination to win at all costs. On the other, you play as a team, get helpful hints, challenges that you work through together and win as a group, even though yours may be the only group playing. My first reaction was: ‘what’s the point?’ Playing the original Scrabble game can help children to learn how to win and how to lose; improve their vocabulary and develop skills in strategy when they realise they can add S to to their opponents ‘Boxer’, thus gaining sixteen points for only one letter. My second reaction was that today’s youngsters are too afraid of losing to enjoy challenging their friends or family, too bothered about what other people think of them or too afraid that someone will post something derogatory on social media. And then I thought again. Playing as a team, you learn to work as a team, vital f...