Herring House: Stories and Other Writing

  Tuesday's book launch was fantastic. Thank you to everyone who came, the superb catering team of Rachel and Kerri - Great Yarmouth Library where the launch was held, our readers, performers, Su Squire and Jason Parr, Lotte and Red Herring Press - Sue, Gaynor and Jo from Herring House Trust, all the writers and supporters of Herring House Trust who turned up and listened in.  Finally, thank you to Culture Connect for funding the publication and event.  The readings were moving, compassionate, funny and simply beautiful.  If you want a copy of this inspirational book contact Red Herring Press . Sue reading An engrossed audience Jason reading The book table

  It's been a while but this blog is proud to announce the launch  of an anthology  of prose and poetry from Herring House Trust's writing group. There is in this collection lived experience, stories, poetry, a group-authored verse drama, a novel excerpt and many reflective texts. It is an extraordinary and very human book. It will be on sale to raise money to invest in more creative activity.  The launch is on September 24th - at 5.30 pm in Great Yarmouth Public Library.  The book is published by Red Herring Press and funded by Cultural Connections - it is a very local affair and thanks are due to all those who have helped to make this a reality. 

  In 2035 the sun still shines but it shines on a world that can no longer change. Too little too late. Children play in the park. The chains on the swings are rusted and frozen; the merry go round stuck in time, as it remembers going round like a planet now dying.  All eyes on handheld devices; children sitting together, but miles apart, looking at their screens; their parents and guardians occasionally looking up to see if they are still there. The birds still sing but their song takes a sombre tone with the whine of electric car motors and their tyres crunching the gravel beneath them. It’s definitely getting hotter. Smoking cigarettes in public is outlawed. Doesn’t really matter. You can’t smoke with your mask on anyway.   like I’ll be eating my d-rats {dehydrated rations} dry tonight. It gets harder to live in the moment when the moments are so much different now. 2020 was almost Utopia compared to this. Russell   Walking alone in my street, I am...

  The giant boy felt he had no place as he walked the fields on a still summer day. He noticed the windmills not turning, he went to the top of a hill and looked down at the motionless windmills. He took a deep breath and blew over the fields and all the windmills turned. The farmers were happy and all came out to cheer the boy and he felt, at last, he belonged.  Russell

Life lost in a containment of lies. Thinking the drink was the answer. I could ignore all that was real, never facing my own demons, never trying to find the inner me.  Now I break free of my containment. Looking in the mirror, seeing the damage I have done to myself. I see the changes I missed - so many years wasting away in a drunken haze. Now I face who I am.  A addict with no more addictions trying to find a reason to live, to be here. I feel unjustified to be on the Earth with all the pain and hurt I out out while I was this other person, inside the addiction side of my mentality.  When I am in such a place, I only see two options: death or drink as I can't find myself as I did when I was drunk.  Who I am Who am I? Darren 

I carried my wounds in the hole in my heart like a steel ball with a chain connected to my soul. It was with great regret I put it down and cut the chain; severing the umbilical cord of comfort it gave me. I dropped the ball that had filled that hole with great reserve...placed in a desert of regret.  I prayed for rain. The rain came with all its wrath, backed by the world, feeling the seed of discontent buried beneath the sands of my mind.  But I persevered with the strength drawn from others, those that had weathered the storm before me. The faeces this world threw at me becoming nutrients my garden needed.  I spend my days weeding the rich soil in the once barren desert as it becomes a garden.   From the fertiliser, humanity has given, all the while aware not to pull the plants that bear fruit, for they are what fills the whole. The chain becomes sentient as it lies in the Eden I have created, inching relentlessly towards my soul; its only purpose to recommen...