Hello from Don and me,

And suddenly it’s November! Only 54 more shopping days (with all week opening hours) to go! Why not send a cheque to your favourite charity and forget all this commercial stuff?

Meanwhile, relax and enjoy the gifts shared in Showcase. You will find Billy Quigley’s photograph ‘Fire Eater’, Trudi Breen’s pastel drawing ‘Still Life’, ‘Nest’, a basket made by Fiona Moir, the Slow Movement from a Haydn Trio - performed by The Landsberg Ensemble, Maureen King’s short story ‘The Beast’ and Edith Ryan’s poem ‘Cherry Blossom’. Our thanks go to all of these contributors.

Please, as usual, keep us posted about your or your group’s events, any new publications or cd’s produced locally or any changes we need to make to your listing. Thanks.

We have just heard that the Smartgroups website, which hosts our Craic page, is closing down. No explanation has been offered so we guess that they have been bombarded by malicious emails of some kind. We have now taken The Craic off our site. If we can find another way of setting up a discussion forum, then we will follow it up.

This year we’re going to hook ourselves on to the Festive Season in a little experiment and we hope you’ll want to join us. If you live or work in our area we are inviting you to send us a ‘Verse for the Festive Season’. We supply the first line of your seasonal poem and invite you to continue it. Your poem can be short or long. Send us nonsense or fun or serious reflection or whatever you like. But it must be decent! It’s open to all ages. Full details are on the website (see below). No prizes. This, just like www.clydevalley.net itself, will be a celebration of creativity for us all to share.

So! Time to get busy. There’s no time like the present. Catch that passing idea and release that inner voice! The deadline is 23rd December (to appear on the Festive Showcase after 25th December) but you can send your poem in as soon as you like. Please select ‘Verse for the Festive Season’ on our ‘home page’ to check our full rules and conditions before sending your poem.

Best wishes

Joanne and Don.