Harrogate Writers' Circle

John announced that he had another item, 'Uncle Mush and Honest Bill', in Best of British.

Then Simon Whaley went through each of the entrants in the article competition.

First was David's piece 'Shedding The Festivities' This was about what the author did in his shed. One of the interesting items was that the first reference to a shed was by Caxton who kept his dogs in one.

Next Simon talked about Peter's piece, 'Flixborough' which describes the disaster at the aforementioned chemical plant. The author makes the article come to life by mentioning a friend of his who was present at the time.

The next article was John's piece 'Weddings, Birthdays, Battles and Deaths' which was an article about anniversaries in general. It explored what they are and why we have anniversaries. Then Susanna's article 'Five Little known facts about D Day'.

This involved a set of quirky facts like Hitler's aids being afraid to wake him to warn that the allied invasion had begun.

Next was Denise's piece 'ABBA - 50 years of breaking boundaries'.

This told of ABBA's initial performance and looks through the groups successes in chronological order and includes a good set of quotes and ends with looking towards the future.

Finally was Joan's article 'A Royal Visit to Harrogate' which opens with the engagement, in 1894, of princess Alix to the future Tsar of Russia.

The article refects how many things are still the same as Alix was treated like a modern day celebrity. The winner of the article competition was declared as Denise and the runner up was Joan.

Simon announced he would be doing a webinar about self publishing and there then followed a general discussion on self publishing.

Our next meeting on July 31 is a talk by Alison Chisholm. Details of our programme can be found online at https://harrogatewriterscircle.weebly.com. If you want to improve your writing then why don't you pop into the next meeting.