The Lively Writers’ Group

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There was a fight at writers’ group last night. It was great. The best meeting I’ve ever been to. Definitely worth 2 quid. Where else would you get to watch a fight, flirt with the jailbait Goth chick that writes poetry and get a cup of tea and four biscuits for two pounds?

Nothing exciting normally happens. Our previous excitement benchmark was when Ollie the computer geek read out a story containing the F word. A deathly silence descended. Then Kathleen gave a disapproving sniff and departed and Mrs. Deacon, who always writes about her cat, felt faint and had to drink a glass of water to regain her strength.

An EGM ensued to set language boundaries; the F word was disallowed, and the rudest word henceforth permitted was ‘damn’. Ollie had to write Kathleen a letter of apology to entice her back. I could have done without Kathleen, her disapproving sniffs and her rigorously punctuated, grammatically sound historical sagas, but then we needed her as treasurer. No-one else had reliable arithmetic, or could be trusted not to spend group funds in the bookies. Our last treasurer, Julian, had staked the lot on a horse, and then had to fine members for lateness.

So, F word apart, the meetings are tame. If we’ve written on the set topic, we bring what we’ve done, if we haven’t, we bring what we’re working on and if we’re not working on anything, we come along to flirt with Drusilla and have some free biscuits.

In your average meeting, Dru reads out her poem while we look up her tiny skirt and silently wish she hadn’t worn those thick black tights. Damon reads a story about elves which ends with them moving into a toadstool home and living happily ever after. Ollie reads a story about a computer geek who seduces a hugely endowed female. The female always delights in slowly and imaginatively undressing.

You get the idea. Same faces. Same stories. Lots of grammatical correction from Kathleen. Lots of biscuits. And no fights. But last night was different…

Damon and Xavier didn’t like each other from the word go because Xavier wrote hard core horror while Damon wrote about fairies. The war started with Xavier murdering fairies in one of his stories, and so Damon retaliated by naming a fairy character Xavier. The fairy called Xavier was overweight and didn’t get the girl, uncannily like his namesake.

It escalated during tea break when Xavier knocked the table, sending a tea splash onto Damon’s work. A bigger disaster than it sounds because Damon writes longhand in his organiser, so doesn’t have copies. Well a disaster for Damon but a result for the group, as once you’ve heard one story about elves and toadstools, you’ve heard them all. Damon splashed back, but Xavier waved a sheaf of copies. Damon tossed the rest of his tea at Xavier. This caused little damage as Kathleen makes the tea, so you get half a cup, and it’s cold. And because Damon throws, like…a fairy.

Xavier armed himself with a pen and Damon grabbed Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook to use as a shield. Whoever said that the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never tried fighting with one because after a few jabs, deflected by the Yearbook, the point snapped off.

Xavier dropped the pen and grabbed a thesaurus, so they were evenly matched. A knock from the corner of a Yearbook had the sting of a rejection letter, but left much worse bruise. Xavier was fading, and we were all watching in shocked awe, except for Julian who offered to take bets.

Mrs. Deacon jumped up, wanting revenge on Xavier who’d once said that the only good cat was a steamrollered one. When Mrs. Deacon had disputed this, he had explained that it meant the cat couldn’t crap on your garden any more- except he couldn’t say ‘crap’ because the word ‘crap’ was on the banned list and he couldn’t say ‘defecate’ either because it was too long, so he had to make do with ‘poo’.

Now he had Mrs. Deacon attacking him with a rolled up copy of Writers’ News. I’m not sure why she buys Writers’ News because the only bit of news that could benefit her would be if there was a sudden world shortage of cat stories.

Kathleen had her most unamused face on- and you wouldn’t think she could manage a less amused face after the F word incident.

‘Really Damon!’ she exclaimed, as Xavier wilted under a barrage of literary blows. ‘At least use a book that no-one would mind seeing spoiled.’ She handed him a Jeffrey Archer which she had brought in to demonstrate a splendid example of bad grammar. Too late. Xavier tripped over Jane’s handbag- poor Jane who was shrinking back from the combat. I’m not sure what Jane writes because she reads in a mousy voice you can’t hear. It might be abstract poetry. It might be hard core porn. We nod and smile, and she leaves happy.

Anyway, Xavier fell, and we leaned forward to see if Damon would keep hitting him. Then the burglar alarm was triggered by the new person looking for the toilet, so we had to trail into the car park and await the police.

Tempers cooled. Xavier and Damon shook hands. The police turned up and told us off for triggering the alarm again.

It was an anticlimax to finish our read-round. While Jane whispered through her story, I wondered if we should add the fight to the program. ‘Join us for an evening of creative writing and a fight in the car park afterwards’. That’s got a ring to it – just what we need to attract new members. It could inspire more effort with the stories if members knew they’d get a kicking for reading out rubbish. It’s the AGM soon so I might suggest it.