Thursday 26 September 2019

24 Sep 2019 Personal stories.


Printed stories were collected and re-distributed for the members to adjudicate.
The results to be read out in two week's time. 

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   Elizabeth remembered an occasion when she was three years old and locked her Mother outside the house on a cold day.
The consternation of her Mother and of helpful neighbours far surpassed that of the young child.
Vivid isolated memories remain of the colours her mother was wearing and the darkness of her parent’s bedroom as she wandered upstairs.

   Pete read a piece from his memoirs about his role in having to develop a computer system for the hated Poll Tax in the nineteen eighties.

   Morag recalled the ambitious embroidery task she set herself when she was just ten years old.
Her mother’s birthday was due. She purchased seven handkerchiefs and with coloured thread, set about stitching the days of the week onto them.
Two things which stood out were the length of the word ‘Wednesday’ and a compliment from her mother that the stitching was just as neat on the front as it was on the reverse.

   Kate’s local shop, as a child, was a predominantly brown, mini emporium with an almost exclusively female clientele.
Every item of clothing or haberdashery was neatly stored away ready for instant retrieval. Whilst sold items were being wrapped and tied up as brown paper parcels, the customers would swap all the local family news. What more interesting news than the potential or actual arrival of new babies.

  Wilma’s and her parents were in the Lake District, when the logistics of a journey using car, train and lake-steamer fell apart. In the days before mobile phones, the captain of the steamer came to the rescue and re-connected father to the rest of his family.
The captain took pleasure in announcing his success over the ship’s tannoy.

   Jack had his back-pack stolen whilst in the Mediterranean. After struggling to get back home, he became the subject of an international police investigation.
His stolen address book had been found in Stockholm without his own name in it, but with the contact details of his friends and suspicious additional names of possible Middle Eastern terrorists.
Pressure on his friends eventually forced him to confess his innocence to the police.

   Fahmy gave us an abridged version of his life story with enough material to suggest several dozen memoirs or possibly a large biography. His interesting, interrelated large family group had experienced a substantial amount of misfortune.

   Hilary recounted the ground breaking holiday in the nineties when she and four friends went off to Florida without the ’benefit’ of male guardians.
In spite of  great misgivings from their various partners and deviation from the planned itinerary, they thoroughly enjoyed themselves. It set a pattern for many more similar all female holidays in the years to come.

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   Elizabeth read a story left over from two weeks previously when the subject was ‘missing’.

At a winter holiday in a remote cottage, a recalcitrant step daughter goes walkabout. Her step mother fears for her safety as she remembers a similar tragic incident when she was a child. When the lost girl is eventually found her relief starts to dissolve the barriers between them.

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Next week:- Deadline – 100-200 wird Article for the Erskine Bridge Hotel Cup.     
                     Bring 500 Words story or max 40 line poem re ‘Fall’


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