Yorkshire Writers' Lunch

  Sorry about the rent. I can’t stay here. John Star sits in his Vanguard, thinking about Archie the tenant at number 11 who’d left that very brief note and disappeared. And the man claiming to be Archie’s son had just done a runner. He should phone the police, except he knows they’ll just ask a load of pointless questions and then tell him there’s nothing they can do until Archie’s been missing for a while longer. So, if anything is to happen, he’ll need to do it himself. Mrs Coles walks slowly down the street towards number 1. Back from the doctors. Star watches as she slowly fiddles with the key to get it just right to open the door. He gives her a few minutes to settle in, gets out of the car, crosses the road and rings the bell. She’s pleased but surprised to see him.     “Everything alright John? Is there a problem with the rent?”     “No, no, Mrs Coles. Everything’s tickety-boo. It’s your famous local knowledge I’m after. Have you got ...

  The Coffee Machine. Hear it scream! Hear it wail! Every rasp an ennui gasp to finally be heard.   It curdles its milk to be unkind, to interrupt poetic verse with its outbursts of blistering steam.   But this is release for pent-up machines, bothered and hot, spilling froth, choked by cloth, voice muffled by The Man.   So let it squeal, trill and feel, spout its spiel, find its words grounded and heard. Rhapsodic Caffeine!

  Mic Technique   You can hear me at the back, can't you? I'm allergic to pop filters. Metal or sock they bring me out in rash decisions.   You'll forgive me if I sound faint. I prefer it a metre to the side. It's better for my stance which projects confidence while my voice doesn't.   It could be worse. My verse at the start was supersonic and I ran a mile as soon as my mouth ran dry.   Now I share at a more measured pace but I still won't have that microphone near my face.

  Three weeks, four weeks, sometimes five. Time for a place to become familiar and comfortable; not quite enough for it to feel like home. And that is just as well. When the call comes, there can be no sentimentality. Pack a bag and leave, never to return. That slice of my life is instantly discarded, prelude to a frantic journey to another town, another living space empty of memories, associations, friends. A few weeks to write those walls, those windows into my mind, to spread some essence of myself upon them, then the cycle will begin again.               It had been going on so long, this procession of disconnected segments. There was no pattern to it, no linking threads that I could point to and say ‘that is my life.’ And I realised that only I could give it shape and meaning, provide a string on which to thread these beads of my existence. And so, at each new place, I bury something from the last: an object th...

  The breeze sucked the orange curtain against the open window and I heard the soft flack of fabric as it bellied then flattened against the chipped metal frame. Outside, kids played football in the cul de sac, running off and on neighbours’ gardens, each one George Best, selfish with the ball, desperate to get past Mrs Worthington’s and Old Man Humphry’s in their worn-out pumps before reaching the corner and the shot at goal that was the Fishers’ gateposts. Inside, behind the half-closed curtain, we sat on the rug, smoking, flicking ash into the empty grate as mournful lyrics told us of sorrow, regret and lost love in those places where he had loved so many women – downtown New York, Quebec, a Greek island. I wanted to be in those places, independent, away from the confine of days in school uniform, the sound of bells measuring the day into lessons, feet on corridors, slamming doors and the scrape of chairs on parquet floors. T...

  St Akelda’s Super-Structured School Opportunity Road Great Bridge Yorkshire 2025 Awards Instead School Inspection Service London Dear Sir/Madam I understand that my name has been put forward for an award in the “Innovative Initiatives” section, for which a supportive explanation is needed. When I first took over St Akelda’s Academy, last year, it was not thriving. We were two places above the relegation zone and I knew I had to act if I was to save the Academy from becoming a mere school again. I looked at the timetable: boring. Access to subjects: restricted. Attendance: poor, especially by bored teenagers who turned up mid-morning, if at all. I looked at the staff: bored, stifled, no hope of progression or promotion. That was when I formulated, then proposed, my new idea: first to staff, then to parents. The school day was to be altered to suit the dispositions of the different age groups. The number of hours per day, per...

  The joy of magic, So funny and intriguing, Lifting our spirits.