Welcome to our new holiday program for 2023, with music from Matt Kowalyk , and poems from Gwynn Scheltema, Katie Hoogendam, and Felicity Sidnell Reid. Especially written for this episode, there are short stories by Ron Mackay, a long time member of our writing community in Northumberland, now living in the Netherlands, but still keeping in touch and from Chris Cameron our guest co-host today, with a story about a writer who seeks inspiration and to break his writer’s block by retreating to a cabin in the snowy forest.
Please join us today and enjoy encore presentations of some of our previous Christmas shows in the last weeks of December.
With all best wishes for the holidays and for 2024 from all at Word on the Hills.
Word on the Hills Radio Program 
Thank you for great contributions, Matt, Gwynn, Katie, Felicity and Chris – and for including me in such august company. Merry Christmas! Ron
I have enjoyed Ron Mackay’s two memoirs, and all his short stories, wherein he says a great deal with few words. The latest story illustrates how two things as trivial and ephemeral as a bottle of orange Fanta and a Mars bar can be momentous objects in an impecunious boy’s rite of passage from childhood to manhood. Congratulations, yet again, Ron!
Thanks, Palmer. Knowing the location and culture where this event took place, you are in a stong position to appreciate its significance. Ron
Like all your stories, Mackay, this one conveys a great message: that of filial love in all its facets. The end of the narrative contains the corollary to the entire story: “And deep in his heart, he knew that this moment meant more, much more, than his coming of age”, because it is not just about coming of age, it is about the grief that comes with transforming from a teenager to a man with all the responsibility that it implies.
The heart is moved by so much reality captured in so few lines.
Congratulations, MacKay, and happy holidays.
Love, Nila.