USUALLY when writing I have to think long and hard before putting fingers to keyboard.

So it came as a real challenge, at the Circle’s meeting on July 12, to be given an opening sentence and 15 minutes to come up with something of a story – or at least the start of one.

Member Neil Wilson, who hosted the evening, gave us the phrase 'it started with a kiss' – and then we were on our own.

With a few scant seconds to ponder, my brain had to go into overdrive. The following was what I came up with, for better or worse:

It started with a kiss, which is hardly what you expect when seated anxiously in a side room waiting to be interviewed for a job with the local council.

The fact that it was a job in the Refuse Collection Department made the kiss all the more unexpected – even if the job was a managerial one and managers are – if they’re any good – expected to cope with the unforeseen.

I looked at the lady and said, “If you don’t mind my saying so, I wasn’t expecting that.”

She smiled. “You’ve gone all red in the face.” She was, I have to say, a very attractive woman: trim figured, open-faced, with flowing dark red hair and deep blue eyes.

“I’m sorry”, I replied. “Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. In the meantime we’ll play you some music.”

It wasn’t Cary Grant – but the best I could accomplish under the circumstances.

“You sound like Channel 4 News”, she went on. “You could even be John Snow – without the grey hair and the tie which assaults the senses.”

“I was told to keep ties sober for days like this. We live and learn.”

The Director of Cleansing Services’ secretary came out and glowered at us with a face like a granite slab in a mouldering cemetery. She turned to me.

“You’re wanted”, she boomed in a less than indulgent tone.

I rose, glanced back at the red-haired lady and went into the interview room, to find the usual top-heavy Council welcoming committee waiting for me: the Mayor, the Director, several other Council members.

Robespierre’s Revolutionary Tribunal would have had a more welcoming ambience. The Mayor, fat and bald, walked across and held out his hand. “How do, lad.”

I tried not to sound nervous. “Kind of you to ask.” My heart was plummeting to my boots.

He regarded me intently. “Is owt wrong?”

“Nothing I’m aware of, I have to say.”

“There’s lipstick on your cheek,” he said. “Can’t have that in Refuse Collection, tha knows.”

The next meeting of the Writers’ Circle will be on Tuesday August 9 at 7.30 pm at our usual venue: Sight Airedale, Scott Street, Keighley – behind Keighley Library.

A brief annual general meeting will be followed by a session where members review their own work. Please contact Peter Morrison on 01535 601943 or email p634morrison@btinternet.com for further information.