HAVANT GROUP:   ON MEETINGS

I suggest we work on different kinds of meetings -  between people, events, things, ideas.   And we link this to different ways of making parts of the text meet;  cuts from one setting to another, point of view to another,  and returning ideas.


WORK FOR WEEK TWO

Write something about meeting a stranger.   The stranger could be expected - a new mother-in-law, a celebrity, a blind date, a client of some kind.   Or the stranger could be unexpected - a person on the train,  a new neighbour,  someone alone and sobbing in the park.

Do two parts of a text, the first in which the stranger is met, the second showing a break where some piece of information stranger has revealed is reported to someone else.

He left the gathering around his wife’s grave and came back across the churchyard.  Slip away.  Get home.  Be alone.   But somebody was waving and calling to him by the fence.

“I’m Emily.”

She was in front of him now.   He too her gloved hand,  waited, looked away towards the gate,  then the  hill.

“You don’t know me.”

He moved to get round her.

“I know you,"   she said

She had shifted in front of him again.

The organ was still playing nondescript chords in the background.  The sun suddenly flashed in a coloured window.   People standing in groups with their black jackets and black dresses were like cutouts.

He tried to get away from her again.

“Reg?”  

Then he did look at her.   All red lipstick behind black veil.

“Look, perhaps we could talk some other time. I’m really not  . . . “

But then she said something that made screw up his face.

*                *                   *                      *                      *                      *

Two hours later,  staring out the front room window his eyes were glittering and motionless.  

His sister Vi, said:   “What on earth did she have to gain from. . .?  Anyway Tom, it’s not true!”

“What if it is, though?”