Our Creative Writing Group met on Wednesday 16 April 2025 to progress some earlier stories and to start some new ones.

We started with the thoughts of a star actress about to step on the stage in a West End production whose attention wanders back over her career, how it began all those years ago and the dramatic changes she had experienced. We then had a poem acting as a confession for someone who realises that time is passing and nothing is getting done. Where do you ‘find time’? Many of us would like to know the trick that enables some of us to ‘make time’.

Our next unexpected confession concerned a homemade blend of tea that contained various gardening chemicals as well as plants – needless to say, we were warned not to try this at home! The gardener ends up sprouting flowers at his fingertips.

As a dramatic change, our next story took us to a hill station in India where, during a country walk, we came across a woman who had collapsed on the path. With no phone signal and no one around, the narrator had problems in finding someone who could help. But in the end all was well after local men fabricated a makeshift stretcher and carried the woman for a mile to the nearest hospital. The next dramatic change saw a cabinet maker die in his bed leaving his most valuable possession to his nephew who we learned might also have been the cause of his death owing to negligence. All of his wealth apart from the one item was consumed in professional fees winding up the estate, but the one object turned out to be a genuine painting by 16th Century Italian artist Raphael.

The dramatic changes continued with the experience of losing a close relative to Alzheimer’s Disease, how it affected a family, and how they had to change all their plans. We closed with a continuation of an explorer trapped in a tomb where he finds a flying machine from tens of thousands of years ago, and the machine is still working.

Our next session will be on Wednesday 7 May 2025 at 10:00am.