Writing ladies with their copies of Black Diamonds!

My lovely writing friends with copies of my book, 'Black Diamonds'. I gave them the books as a gift as they've been very good and supportive friends to me this past few years.

Rose and Pearl are the knitters of the group and over the past couple of years have made some beautiful jumpers, jackets and bonnets for my two-year-old granddaughter.

Rose, on the left loves to bake and often presents us with Welsh cakes to take home.

Pearl, on the right, has a great spirit of adventure and will soon take a helicopter ride, which was a present from her grandson for her 75th birthday.

This is Marion and Rita.  I've known Marion [on the left] for several years. She's very wise and spiritual. Rita, [on the right] I've known more recently as she started to come out for meals with us. She's a friend of Rose and Pearl.

Another member of the group is Wendy, unfortunately for us, she was away when the pics were taken, but not unfortunate for her though as she was on a cruise! I've kept a book for Wendy which I'll give her this week when we meet up. Wendy always has us in stitches with tales of her antics.

The group has now been meeting for five years, but before that I used to run a writing therapy group at a local cancer centre, which is how I met some of the ladies in the first place. The group was very successful and popular and was once filmed for the TV show, 'Secret Millionaire'.

We now meet up every fortnight for lunch and a natter. To be honest, I call them the writing ladies as that's how the group started off, but nowadays we just lunch and eat, share one another's joys and sorrows and have formed a close bond with one another.  I always look forward to those days we meet for lunch, it's a couple of hours of light hearted banter and friendship.