Minutes of the Meeting: 16 January 2020 Venue: Neo’s Sports Club, Pegeia

Present:

John Goodwin Jennie Rook Derek Whittle Dee Leigh Michael White

June Megennis Caroline Harman Smith Beryl Lowe Richard Powell (new member)

Apologies from: Richard Palmer

Greetings Scribes,

The first meeting of 2020 and the start of the winter term, it was nice to see new and old members. Apologies made for Rich Palmer, who has undergone knee surgery, speedy recovery wishes to him from us all.

John announces his purchase of his new home in St Leonard’s Upon Sea, UK and will be leaving at the end of February.

Topics of discussion further to John’s departure were; PWG finances, the PWG library and how the group should be run from February/March.

It was agreed that:

Dee is happy to continue managing the finances and John will forward the excel spreadsheet, for her to use.

John will bring in the boxes of books from the PWG library from next week. Anyone is free to take or store the books, should they wish. John will make an inventory.

Jennie is happy to continue to update and maintain the PWG website, with John’s input from UK if required. The payments of the website will be re-arranged too. John will hand-over the administration of the Facebook page to Jennie. When not travelling, Jennie is happy to take the meeting minutes, with Rich Palmer.

New Member: Richard Powell, originally from Vancouver, Canada resides full time in Paphos, Cyprus, for the last 2 ½ years, and heard about PWG through Sandra Sizmur a former member of the PWG whom he met at the Phoenix Walking Group. Rick has worked remotely in UK and has been published in various magazines. He has written short fiction, memoirs and a historical work, chronicling Roman roads from the Bronze Age through to present day.

Readings based on homework theme: 2020 Visions

Derek ‘Last Night’s TV. 2020: Looking backwards and forwards. Led to a discussion on UK’s endless TV series repeats over the Festive period and how scripts and characters have had to be re-written due to cultural differences and being non-discriminatory.

Mike ‘2020 vision’ - an emotional and cathartic, personal account of his wife’s vision.

John ‘12/12 2020’ – a dystopian view of the future. Led to a discussion on developing shorter stories and formatting texts for book publication.

Coffee break: 11:00 – 11:30

Speed writingt exercise: ‘Now, is the winter…’ and readings from all members.

Reading:

John read an extract from his ‘Take a Look in my Shorts’ collection entitled 'The Lament of the Expat sock.'

Homework: Write a story or poem in any genre, up to 500 words, illustrating the theme ‘Winter’ or expand on your speed test exercise, from the meeting.

Next meeting will be on: Thursday 23 January at Neo’s Sports Club.

Thanks to all who attended and happy writing.