Any lingering doubts on the sanity of GWC members was put to bed last night in a mad-cap roundabout of slam sunk poetry and crazy-weird flash fiction. Tony kicked things off and set the tone with his rendition of Pilgrim’s Progress that seen the intrepid Stacey Marie run the gauntlet of Morris Men and mad librarians and surviving the den of Grahame the Grimm. The plucky Stacey Marie continued her progress dodging not the death imagined of Queen Anne and outwitting Madge the Matron to triumph in the end. I think pretty much every GWC member must have got a shout-out in Tony’s tour de force.
Anyway the evening continued with more readings from GWC members. There was Christine’s scary ghost story set on a shortcut home through a cemetery after a late night party and Laurie’s clever take on Jane Eyre. Harking back to last week, Colette’s ‘Autum Leaves’ gave us all a gentle respite from the strange and spooky but then Fiona’s rendition of Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky set us back on track again. She also did something about a really scary cat!
Mhairi read out an extract from Halloween by Robert Burns, while Anne tempted fate by reciting the ‘Double, double toil and trouble’ witches speech from the Scottish play and Laurie’s skull poem from our Scottish Icon collection. Spoiler Alert – it’s a dinosaur! There really were too many weird and wonderful readings to mention. Margaret, who was hosting proceedings, concluded this section of the evening with her version of the ‘Spider and the Fly’ – very inventive!
After tea-break we did a writing exercise (set by Margaret) – to write some Halloween flash fiction or a poem based on the last two films we’d seem and the last two book we’d read. This is where GWC members imaginations really ran wild. Tony’s Joyeux Halloween had Napoleon’s Marshals both discovering and destroying the Rosetta Stone – go figure? That was tame fare though compared to Christine’s tale involving Bilbo Baggins meeting a bouncing Tigger who, after an unfortunate slight, morphed into a hobbit eating Venom. Paul though took us all back to those romantic encounters in cinemas (though the Exorcist was not the best choice of film) while Fiona left us all nervous about the next time we’re alone on a train entering a tunnel. Then Stacey Marie rounded things off with a good old tale of witches and ghoules. All in all just your average Halloween night at GWC.
Next meeting is on 3rd November – A peer editing night featuring Paul’s story ‘The Field’.
Ho Hum, onwards and upwards.