Alison, Tim, Tony and Clive met at Clive’s house on Tuesday, April 10th.

News
Tony did his first stand-up gig at Artrix in Bromsgrove recently; he didn’t die and the audience laughed at the jokes – what more could a stand-up ask? Tony’s prepared script ran to around 1000 words and occupied about 8 minutes. Keep an eye on the telly?? Firecracker Mountain, Tony’s children’s work-in-progress, is now up to 10,000 words towards a target of around 25,000 and will be illustrated by Sarah Hayward before being  offered for publication. Tim’s been just as busy as Tony – but not with writing, rather catching up with visits to and from old friends. He has lots of half-finished works, including Mr A Havergoe who is languishing in desuetude at present. Alison has all but finished her novel and expects to begin submitting to agents and publishers in the next ten days; its present, possibly temporary title is Sweet Nothings. Her Creative Writing course, addressed to 19 students, at Worcester Uni has three more sessions to run.


Review of Keep Peckham Tidy
This is the title of Tim’s short story, which describes an incident amongst some drug-dealers’ in the eponymous South London suburb. The central character is a derelict who latches onto the dealers’ communication ruse – calls to local radio using a code – and uses his knowledge to acquire a plastic bag containing twenty grand and later a quantity of crack cocaine, after which things get complicated, especially for the guy who was to have collected the twenty grand.
The overall verdict of the story’s three reviewers was that the piece was like the curate’s egg – good in parts. In fact, it was excellent in parts: the atmosphere, the authenticity of the setting and the pace were all first-class, all of which combined to provide an very enjoyable read. The reviewers’ doubts concerned the plausibility of the plot, with questions raised over the motivation of the main character in some of his actions. Tony would have appreciated a more detailed description of the main character in the story’s opening and also found some inconsistency in the voicing of this character. There were a number of minor changes suggested in the punctuation and layout and some inconsistencies that arose, it transpired, from Tim’s having edited the story down, but all easily corrected.

Next meeting date provisionally fixed for Tuesday April 24th at Tony’s house, Alison to submit, but, as we had previously agreed but obviously forgotten, someone else to read the first 1000 words.