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Meetings are held on the first and third Tuesdays of the month at Dancox House Club Room, St Clements Gardens, St Johns, Worcester from 7.30 pm to 9.30pm.
If you want to know more about Worcester Writers' Circle, please telephone Sue Round, Secretary 01905 619062.
Probably the oldest writers' circle in the country, we have grown from half a dozen enthusiasts in the dark days of the Second World War, to a thriving and productive group of people who share their experiences, successes and pitfalls at each meeting. We have a wide range of writers, some published professionals, some occasionally appearing in magazines, and many newcomers eager to see their name in print.
At a normal meeting, we read from our work, sometimes on a theme set for the evening and we offer advice and reactions. A cup of tea and a chat of course, and discussions about markets, successes and rejections. Sometimes we have a speaker from amongst our ranks, or a guestjoining us for the evening. Our interests are wide - stories, Westerns, nostalgia, poetry, biography, roofing and cats have all featured at our meetings. If you can get to Worcester, (that's the one in Worcestershire, England) give us a try.
Cousins
by John Stafford
Trevor started to take an interest in girls when he was eleven. He didn't actively pursue it, or them, for another four years. There was Scouts, stamp collecting and talking too loud in the children's library to fit in first. But in the top class of the primary school, he began to notice the flash of red eyelashes, the casual sling of a school bag on one shoulder. And his Mum noticed too.
"Don't get interested in her, she's your cousin," she said when Trevor casually mentioned that Jean Hendry had finished first in the hundred yard race. She identified three other cousins before he began to wonder how they came to be related to him when he didn't know their parents.
"Your Dad's brother, Uncle Joe had a bike," was the enigmatic answer that satisfied him until his fifteenth birthday came along. He dropped into lunchtime conversation that he was meeting Hilary Bennett in a caf�after school.
"She's one of your Uncle Joe's too. He toured the district on his pushbike getting all the local girls in the family way, around the time you were born. Your Auntie Nesta caught him out. She wasn't actually pregnant but pretended to be for long enough to get him to the altar. Then she took him off to the Australian Outback, out of harm's way. Or away from his debts, more like." Mum kept a list of Joe's strays in an old diary. They were all girls, as far as he could see over her shoulder. He thought perhaps it was to do with Uncle Joe's Y-chromosomes. He knew that much biology.
He feels bad about reading his Mum's diaries now, but both parents have been gone a long time, and he needs to know if his latest passion is for one his relatives. The forbidden fruit list is in the volume for the year of his birth, and she's added a message to him on the bottom: "You'll see this one day: just so you'll know, these 'cousins' are your half-sisters. You're one of Uncle Joe's too."
Copyright © John Stafford 1998