September 2026

This month’s gathering of the Welston Book Worms relocated to the Common Room at Cosy Days, home turf for both Alfred Bushwell and me.

This month, all seven Book Worms were present and accounted for. An eighth presence sat quietly at the centre of the table throughout the afternoon, contributing nothing to the discussion and yet dominating it entirely: a full cream tea, clotted cream included, with strawberry jam Chef Rossi had made from strawberries grown in the community’s own garden.

Sonia opened proceedings by explaining her choice — Lucy Jane Wood’s Rewitched, the story of Belladonna Blackmore, a secretly witchy bookshop manager facing a trial that will determine whether she keeps her powers as she turns thirty. Sonia felt the October setting made the book a natural pick for the month ahead, a sentiment nobody disputed, largely because most eyes had already drifted toward the scones.

Chef Rossi, delivering a fresh pot of tea, mentioned — with what I can only describe as calculated casualness — that he’d rather enjoyed the book himself, and had a “few thoughts” he wouldn’t mind sharing. Eleanora Reingold set down her cup and reminded him that the club’s own rules permit no more than seven members. Chef Rossi accepted this with the quiet dignity of a man who knows how good his scones are and can afford to wait.

We were interrupted twice more by residents wandering in, drawn by the smell of baking, each demanding to know why a proper cream tea wasn’t on that week’s regular menu. Neither received a satisfying answer, resulting in pilfered scones.

As for the book itself: Constance dismissed Belle as a slacker, arguing she’d only returned to magic to avoid losing it, which in Constance’s view disqualified her from being any kind of heroine at all. Alfred flipped through the notes Joe had reminded him to bring, and then he appeared to mull something.

‘Belle wasn’t lazy,’ he said. ‘She was stuck. Like Holden Caulfield or Gatsby, she was caught between who she was and who she believed she had to become.’

The group fell silent, and the silence lasted exactly as long as it took Joe Halton to admit he’d misread the book’s title and spent three evenings watching Bewitched instead — the sixties series, not the 2005 movie, which he avoided on realising his mistake. The Book Worms dissolved into laughter.

Sensing its moment, the cream tea drew every eye back to itself.

Gerard confessed he’d found the story’s themes of family and friendship genuinely moving, though he’d spent the first half rather cross with Belle for ignoring every opportunity handed to her. By the ending, anger had given way to tears of joy. Eleanora, meanwhile, declared herself thoroughly satisfied with the coven’s trial process—sorting the magical wheat from the chaff, as she put it—though she admitted disappointment on learning exactly why certain coven members abused the process because of wanting Belle to fail.

Sonia tried to open up the discussion by asking for more on the story’s villains and the slow-burn romance between Belle and Rune. Eleanora, with one eye on the scones and the other on the clock, proposed instead a simple yay-or-nay vote to close the meeting efficiently. Six hands went up in favour; one—Constance’s, naturally—did not.

With the September verdict delivered, the Book Worms turned their full attention to the tea. I had my eye on the dried fruit scones, of which only two remained. A plain scone, in my view, is an affront to baking, and I wasn’t about to lose this particular battle to anyone still arguing about witches.​