Meeting report for 2nd August

First of all apologies came from Beryl (on her hols) Carolyn same again with Clive in Gay Paree and Ruth; though apologising for being so successful doesn’t seem correct.

We had a large number of members attending (which we do not complain about).

These are the brave ones that withstood the heat of the day and the rather steamy atmosphere of the meeting. With subject matter being ‘The train journey’ you can imagine the flights of fancy, golden memories and interesting history lessons we were treated to, even though the train whistles and diesel fumes were sometimes overpowering the variety of contributions had something for everyone.

We were even surprised with one thousand words from Jack in the form of a short play, set on his train. This made a change from his frantic finishing of homework on the night!

Okay then, the members present were as follows, with their own particular slant on;

THE TRAIN JOURNEY.

Les began with his story, full of humour that us old ones remember from past train journeys when we were slightly younger.
TRAIN JOURNEY

Ray rather cheekily incorporated the actual words ‘the train journey from . . .’ in one sentence then gave us another very interesting story.
THE GUARD BLEW HIS WHISTLE

Liliane had us amazed at the amount of research she had done, in the past, and recently, on the history of the railways.
RAIL TRAVEL AS IT USED TO BE

Dick thought his two days on the Canadian Rocky Mountaineer was the holiday to beat all. From his description we all thought he was not far wrong.
A DAY ON THE ROCKY MOUNTAINEER

Caz had us reaching for hankies again with a story of a chance meeting (twice, indeed) with a young lad, obviously off to hospital and more treatment, with his mother and Caz’s involvement with yet another charity.
THE TRAIN JOURNEY

Robyn gave us her slant on Russian royalty and the Orient express.
WINTER HALT

Dave A spooky tale of dark deeds, rail crashes and premonitions.
FINAL DESTINATION

Barry My story was an economy version on an intercontinental train from Utah to California. THE DESERT WIND

Tony had us laughing again with his humourous story called
A DAY IN THE LIFE

Martin’s early memories of flowers, tidy stations and people clamouring for the train during school holidays.
DERBY ROAD STATION

Sandy took us on a journey to Kendal for two weeks recreation.
UNSETTLED IN SETTLE

Cathy had a sad tale of a young boy struggling to remember his father in a good light.
A GOOD MAN

Jane brought the tear ducts into operation again with the story of a young soldier and his mothers, and his comrades memories of him before his death in Afghanistan.
THE LOVE TRAIN

Finally I must congratulate Jack, Jane’s son, on his efforts to bring us a short play of suspects on a train, read by five other meeting members. Good job Jack.
THE TRAIN

All in all a really engrossing and interesting meeting. Thanks to all members braving the rarified air of The Room at The Top for two and a half hours.

Trish attended but did not bring any writing as her life has been even more full of trials and tribulations, but it was great to see her.

Sally was anther non writing member as she has just started a new job with an Electrical company and needed every spare minute to prepare. Good luck, Sally, on the new job, we only need four words next meeting. Socket, wire, plug and switch, perhaps?

For the next meeting on the 16th August there will be NO SET HOMEWORK just bring along four words on individual pieces of paper and we have our twenty or thirty minute writing exercise where we pick four different word from Dicks hat, if he remembers it.

Sorry for the extended minutes.

I get carried away sometimes.

Barry.