Writing can be a lonely business, even if you don’t discipline yourself to ignore the front door and phone-calls and wistful looks from a sad-eyed, smudgy-nosed labrador through the french windows to your designated writing zone.

Since my university course finished (did I mention that I recently graduated?… Oh, I did?…), I have been missing the colourful company of my student cohort. Although my family and friends try very manfully/womanfully not to glaze over like the aforementioned fenêtres at the mention of enjambement and soliloquies, it is nice to have fellow writers in your life who can even summon up a modicum of interest and, if you’re lucky, an appropriate response.

This week, I was fortunate to be introduced to a group of lively ladies in Saltburn who have been meeting up to share their writing and reading and general thoughts-on-the-Universe for a while now. I know that the arrival of any ‘outsider’ – never mind a great cuckoo such as myself- can upset the balance of an established group, so I was grateful to them for being so welcoming to me to their Christmas meeting and allowing me to have Stollen slices and Iceland own-brand mint-choc ‘Matchmaker’-type sticks. I’m looking forward to returning to their perfect writers’ den with a frontline view of the wild North Sea waves, next month.

This weekend, I was also back in Saltburn (because I have not yet located a writerly ‘scene’ in Marske) to attend The Second Breakfast Club, hosted by the equally hospitable Carmen. Here, we ‘pitched’ our favourite books and analysed Hemingway and sketched out the future direction of the group, aided by slices of an indecently delicious chocolate log and a self-replenishing cafetiere. This group has already hatched some great ideas for future creative projects, and I am looking forward to playing my part in the up-and-coming literary life of Saltburn, if I can keep up with Carmen, who seems to have discovered boundless energy and a magic time-stretcher.

There was also a reassuring sense of community at Ek Zuban’s Christmas Cabaret of music and spoken word in Middlesbrough on  Wednesday. Held in the traditional, surprisingly atmospheric Westgarth Social Club, the evening showcased the talents of emerging Teesside performance poets. I can now count myself among their number, having resisted the temptation to do a runner during the interval, thanks to words of encouragement from friends and wordsmiths Julie and Chris, to my husband refusing to drive me home, and to restorative sips/glugs of Chardonnay. The alliteration in the second poem didn’t seem like a such a clever idea after my third glass (“shlipper shocks shlip down shteep shtairs”, etc) but overall, the evening was heart-warming.A triumph. The Social Club did what it says on the sign.

Maybe I need to get out more.