Meeting held 2nd June 2011
Suggested theme: Trains
A healthy attendance and an entertaining evening was opened by Robin making us consider the ‘disappearing train’. Times certainly have changed. Later in the evening Bill echoed that theme with an article about the evacuation during World War Two. Both contributions took us back to a time when the railways were very much part of the national psyche.
Steff offered two separate pieces. Her ‘Runaway Train’ was the epitome of style and pathos and the denouement was strangely logically surprising and satisfying.
Roy’s ‘Orient Express’ was a celebration of rhythm and rhyme and bore favourable comparison with Auden’s ‘Night Mail’, a well thought out and crafted poem. Elizabeth cleverly reminded us of the richness and variety of our wonderful language by considering the various interpretations of our topic, train/trains.
Jean used a missed train to gave us a more personal reminiscence with precise rhyme, rhythm and nous, some might say all sex and Scouse - but I would not dare. Again in a way it reminded us of bygone days, in more ways than one.
Charles deviated from the topic and presented us with a mysterious poem inspired by the news of the proposed sale of wartime aerodrome of Winkleigh. This was a thought provoking and eerie composition made all the more so by the coincidence of a work by Mr. David Cargill, a friend of the first Thursday Group, which is a ghost story set in Winkleigh air strip in the sixties. This could run.
Iain also deviated and played around with North Devon place names.
The topic for the next meeting is to be ‘Fox’.