A Collection of Poets, various and strange; staff who flit, almost silently, from room to room; mysterious, Svengali-like tutors who exert a magical influence on their hapless charges.  Several inches of snow. No way in, no way out. No footprints.

We wondered if, one morning, one of us would fail to appear around the large communal breakfast table, perhaps found stabbed through the heart by an icicle, the murder weapon having vanished in the toasty heat of the victim’s room. The perfect Murder Mystery…

While we waited for the screams, we wrote. We wrote our last wills and testaments, we wrote kisses, lectures, sex tips for the dead*. We turned our loved ones into furniture. And at the end of the week, we spoke, we gave evidence, we bore witness. Gathered in the library, the denoument was delivered. Each of us was somehow involved, said Miss Bird, exercising the little grey cells. Each of us was responsible, each of us compelled, somehow, to write.

This has been an Arvon Production at The Hurst. Please don’t have nightmares.

* ‘The earth has to move first’ – said Bob.