The usual procedure is for the Meeting to receive a report from its Secretary about all in-coming mail received since the previous Meeting, take any Apologies for Absence and then to go non-physically round the table, either anticlockwise or clockwise, inviting the Members present to read out aloud whatever it may be, either in prose or in verse, about the subject which was set as the ìTopic of the Week

The usual outcome is for there to be discussion about the merits or de-merits of the piece; we hope that this form of friendly, helpful criticism, will encourage Members to write more and gain some confidence in writing some more.

Towards the end of each year, time is taken discussing, sometimes avidly, what we are going to have as a title for our next anthology; which pieces that each member has submitted.

It is our policy to publish an Anthology every year to include at least one piece of writing from each of our Members, though whether this/these are the best pieces can be a wholly subjective judgement.

These Meetings take place every Friday. Members begin to congregate from around 13.00hrs., at The Citadel Theatre in Waterloo Street, St. Helens, in the first-floor Meeting Room, to which there is a lift from just inside the front door.

On the ground floor, there is the Citadel Cafe, from which a lunch may be obtained and light refreshments are available. Sadly, we no longer have our own facilities for organising our own mid-session brew

And the cost, do I hear you ask? We have an annual Membership subscription of £2.00 per year or per part thereof; there is no weekly fee, and non-members are most welcome to drop-in any week to sample for themselves the atmosphere to get a feel for how they believe that they might slot into these gatherings.

Of course, as with any voluntary organisation such as is ours, there is no compulsion for every Member to attend every week. We have people who work a shift system, who obviously cannot attend every week.

But it is our hope that people will enjoy attending and we use that as the motivating factor.

For those who so wish, we always pleased to receive any written work on the week's Topic, for it to be read-out by the Hon. Sec. (usually) at the Meeting and these can either be delivered to The Citadel or be posted to The Citadel and they will be handed to our Secretary on the Friday. In this way, we try to and feel that we do manage to keep in contact with absent friends.

The most unexpected and pleasant occurrence came in 1997, when that year's anthology, "Life, Love and Laughter", in the Writers' News Annual Anthology National Competition, was adjudged to be the winner! Since then, we ourselves believe that each anthology has been an improvement upon the one which preceded it and each has, likewise, been submitted to that Competition, but without any similar rewards!

For those who have a competitive approach to writing, the Circle receives vastly numerous communications, unsolicited, from other writers' groups in all parts of Great Britain, which solicit poems or short stories, usually to be written on a particular topic, to be submitted with a set fee for some disproportionate prize or other. Any Member who wants details of these is very welcome to use them.

Other material received is from what are loosely referred to as 'Vanity Publishing' addresses. These people usually seem to want your money to publish your work for you, whereas, through our anthologies, we ourselves publish your work in your own name for gratis!

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