WRITING FOR PLEASURE

Fred Mitchel

We all enjoy ourselves in this Group and we regularly publish anthologies of our work. We'll be delighted to welcome any members who would like to write simply for the pleasure of writing and receive friendly advice and encouragement in good company. This month we’ll meet at 10am at The Rest on Friday 14th November and Friday 28th November.

 

An extract from

The Cockle Woman

 

‘Cockles and laver bread’

That familiar call, in the days of my childhood, over sixty years ago, would bring busy housewives to their front gates. The Cockle Woman had arrived. Rain or shine, she would arrive, every Friday morning on the early N and C coach from Swansea, laden with her supplies of fresh Penclawdd cockles, mussels and laver bread. Slowly she would walk the streets of Pyle, her old wooden tub, carried on her head, calling her wares.

            I remember her as a small round lady, her weather-beaten face brown and wrinkled as an old russet apple. Always she wore a long, dark woollen skirt, shawl around her shoulders and an old-fashioned black bonnet on her head.

Balanced firmly on this bonnet was her trademark, the old wooden tub. Welsh was her first language, but in our village she spoke English with a strong west Wales accent…