The Writing group, The Book Project & The Soup Kitchen

As I walked out of Nancy’s Bordello, my head was filled with writing structures, printers’ quotes and the significance of  a female size 10 shoe size. The night was quite warm and the neon streetlights brought a clinical orangey sterility to the towering downtown city flats.

I had just waved off a writing assignment for a blog as I was ‘too busy’ and should in fact have been writing the book. (Instead of attending an inaugral non-fiction writing group meeting). We had exchanged pleasantries, broken the ice, warmed to the structure and planned the future for our newborn infant.

As I walked down the incline to the quayside and car park, I remembered how this had all been warehouses at one time. Burning warehouses as I recall and a full days work to boot. The job of a conflagration extinguishment technician was not always a quiet one.

Enough recall. As I was approaching the foot of the bank I noticed a lady in front – she was pulling one of those tartan-seen better days, wheelie shopping bags. A headscarf and careworn coat completed the outfit. ‘Bag-Lady’ was the word I had been looking for. Bit warm for that I thought. It was then that the old ‘Streets of London’ song (Ralph McTell) popped into my head. Boy, some imagination you’ve got son – and you’ve just been to a NON -fiction writing group.

It was as we turned the corner, nearly together, to face the tall dark railway arch, that fiction became reality. Just before the arch a large group of people were in the process of forming an orderly line. Not the best dressed group in the city centre at this time, I have to say. It was quiet, with only low murmers to be heard. The crowd was gathered around a large white van, parked at the edge. On it’s side it had the words ‘Soup Kitchen’, within a large red circle.

I walked past and entered the smaller pedestrian tunnel on the other side of the road. I looked back. To check, that I hadn’t mistaken it for some kind of ‘night-time history tour’ end, finishing with a brew up. (It was heritage week in the city). No, no mistake.

Sometimes it’s a jolt when the fiction of our minds meets the reality of our surroundings. We know it’s there, but we don’t go looking for it. Sometimes we forget and are reminded when we bump into a charity collection box.

Earlier, at the writing meeting, Peter had expressed a wish to write politically for the ‘End Poverty Now’ campaign.

I could see now, that his writing was definitely to be in the realm of,  NON-FICTION.

Firekat.

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