SIX women who meet regularly around a kitchen table have written a collection of their own short stories.

The Leap Year, the first offering from the Contemporary Women Writers’ Club, is designed to promote women’s writing.

It features tales of blood and lust in Argentina, grief in Montreal, passionate reunions in New York, a car- jacking in South Africa, a ghostly visit in London, a honeymoon accident in Kenya and a divine encounter in Hong Kong.

Each story deals with a particular life stage and the “leaps” are sometimes physical or emotional and always psychological with common themes of self- recognition, re-evaluation and reinvention.

The six are Lucy Cavendish, Miranda Glover, Rachel Jackson, Anne Tuite-Dalton and Jennie Walmsley, who all live in South Oxfordshire, and Alexa Hughes Wilson, an American who moved to Mapledurham in 2003. Some are already established writers.

Mrs Cavendish, 42, a mother of four from Skirmett, said: “Like many women, we met through friends of friends, at the school gate and in the playground and discovered we shared the desire to write.

“Taking the model of the book group, we decided to start a club in which to experiment with our fiction writing. The Leap Year is the result — and we’re very proud of it.” She has written two books and writes for a number of national newspapers.

Mrs Glover, 41, who was raised in Henley and attended Gillotts School, has a background in arts publishing and has written three novels. She said: “I had an excellent English teacher at Gillotts and she said to me when I was 14 that I should be a writer.

“The Leap Year has been an amazing experience, a lot of hard work and a fantastic result. We are very proud of it and intend to write more collections together.”

Mrs Glover lives in South Moreton with husband Charlie and their two children, Fen and Jessie. Ms Jackson, 35, who lives with partner Peter and his twins Emma and Charlie, 12, in Preston Crowmarsh, is currently working on her own novel, which explores her Afro-Caribbean roots. She has written for The Erotic Review and women’s magazines.

Ms Walmsley, 41, who lives with her partner and three children in Brightwell-cum-Sotwell, has not had any fiction published.

She said: “Having worked for many years as a TV and radio producer at the BBC, where I wrote and edited scripts, the club has given me the opportunity to write creatively, beyond the constraints of fact and journalistic integrity.”

Mrs Hughes Wilson, 39, who is married with two children, said the group encouraged her to write.

Mrs Tuite-Dalton, 41, who is French and lives in Checkendon, said: “Writing within a group has been fantastic. It has cemented friendships and given me self-confidence. The club has been life- transforming.”

She is a modern languages teacher and is married with three children.

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The Leap Year, price £6.99, is published by QueenBee Press and available from www.thecwwc.co.uk

ON October 11, the day after my 60th birthday, I told the congregation at Christ Church that Kath and I would be leaving because we had been called by God to two churches in what is officially called the North Bury Pastorate in Lancashire.

One church is in the village of Greenmount, the only one in a place half the size of Henley, and the other is in an area of Ramsbottom called Dundee.

There was a lot of sadness and we are sad to be moving away after nearly 11 years in Henley.

Most of you will have moved home or job and know what we are facing as we try to get ready to move in early January while also preparing for the Christmas celebrations at church.

However, our sadness is balanced by the excitement of the move and what lies ahead because, just as when we came to Henley in 1999, we go with God’s prompting and his guidance and we know that he will be with us all the way.

Life is a journey and during our time here our lives have been touched by many people from both the church and the community.

We will go having been enriched by the experiences we have shared with so many, experiences which God has been using as preparation for the next chapter he has prepared for us.

Life is a series of beginnings and endings and new beginnings and Sunday is the beginning of a new church year when in Advent we look ahead to prepare for both Christmas and celebrating the birth of our Lord and then beyond to the time of his promised return.

He is the God of yesterday, today and tomorrow so as we face each change in our lives we have the wonderful promise of God that he goes with us every step of the way and nothing we do and nowhere we go can take us beyond the love of God or separate us from his love.

So we leave Henley, not with fear and trepidation but with joy and anticipation, and we will take with us many special memories of our time here.

We will continue to pray for the churches and the town as a whole that God’s blessing may be upon you and his presence be more real to each and everyone of you.

God bless you.

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