OK, I admit it, I’ve been darning. It’s not a fashionable thing to do. But when warm clothes come out of storage as winter hoves into view, that’s when you spot the frayed ends and the tears – and also in my case the moth holes, moths being a plague in South London.

Hence the darning. It’s something I was taught as a child and, to be honest, I enjoy it. It’s satisfying, it saves on money and shopping and it makes me love my clothes all over again.

Yesterday while sitting darning in a spot of sunshine, I was reminded of the story below. But it wasn’t only the darning that brought it to mind. Among my emails had been a message from someone who’d come on a storytelling course of mine ages ago. I recognised her name as it popped up in my Inbox. We’d exchanged emails for a while after the course was over because she’d wanted to tell me how much she was enjoying becoming a storyteller to children in the school where she worked. And hey presto, she’s still doing it! Her message this week lets me know how much the storytelling means to her following some personal troubles she’s suffered. She describes it as ‘healing’.

No wonder today’s story about a sewing box popped into my mind. I’m fairly sure it wasn’t one that we did on the course she attended. But it’s one I’ve often told to Primary children – sometimes with the effect that afterwards I’ve heard that they’ve been sewing story-titles too!

The story: A Stitch in Time (more…)

Yesterday evening, my old friend, storyteller Debbie Guneratne, was performing with dancers and singers at a Malaysian Night in Trafalgar Square. A few days before, on the phone, she was apprehensive – entirely understably you might say. Trafalgar Square? On a Friday night? But her apprehensions also made me chuckle.

A personal tale:

‘Don’t worry too much,’ I responded. ‘Trafalgar Square can be surprisingly kind. Once long ago, when we had our first car, I broke down in Trafalgar Square in the middle of a Saturday morning. I was on my own. What a nightmare!’

Except it turned out to be almost a pleasure, not a nightmare at all. Two young policemen turned up as if out of nowhere, pushed the car onto a safe, quiet spot at the south of the central island of the square and helped me call the AA. (It was long before mobile phones.)

Phew! Often when I’ve gone through Trafalgar Square since then, I think of the way in which a horrid situation that turns out OK can transform into a happy memory. Another Trafalgar Square event which also often returns to mind seems somehow related. (more…)

You may well remember the story. Or perhaps you’ll have retained just some essence of it. Often entitled in print, The Soul as Butterfly, it’s an Irish tale which  I’ve recounted in this blog before. It seems to me to encapsulate something about the kind of symbolism I talked about last week.

A story worth knowing:

A butterfly emerges from the open mouth of a man who lies asleep in a field. His companion who has just woken sees it and, astonished, follows as it flies towards the stream that runs beside the field, then through the reeds that grow at the water’s edge until it comes to a place where the branch of a tree has been placed over the stream to make a crossing.

In its hazy-dazy way, the butterfly flies across the stream and the man who’s been following it follows there too until it reaches a skull that’s lying, whitened, on the ground. The butterfly alights on what must have been the forehead of the creature whose skull this was (it looks like the skull of a horse),  then enters through one of the holes where the eyes would have been. After a long pause, it re-emerges and, in the same hazy-dazy way, makes its way back to the sleeper who still lies prone in the field. Suddenly it’s gone. Now the sleeper’s companion can’t be sure if it’s gone back into his friend’s mouth. What he certainly experiences is his friend awaking, sitting up and saying, ‘I’ve had such a marvellous dream.’ (more…)

In the depths of the ocean lived a king. (What was his name? I don’t remember.)

The king longed for company. He lived all alone. (Had he ever had a wife or children?)

One evening as he rode out on one of his tides, the king became aware of sweet sounds of music and, looking up at a house by the sea, he saw two lovely young women sitting in the firelight playing their harps. 

A longing grew in the heart of the king until one late evening on a high Autumn tide, he rode out of the sea on his finest white horse, rushed to the girls’ house and snatched them away together with the harps they were playing. (Were the girls alone when he did that? What were they called?)

When the king of the ocean had brought the two girls into his palace beneath the waves, they first felt fear, then became very sad. They missed their home. They missed the bright light of day. The king of the ocean would ask them to play him their music, but the music they made for him lacked any joy.  

After much sadness and pleading, the king of the sea knew this couldn’t continue. He must show pity. He must listen to the two young women he’d seized and return them to their home on land. But when his white horses brought them in from the sea, just as they stepped onto the land, they changed. (Did the king of the sea command that to happen? Or did the pity that the girls felt for him play a part?)

As they stepped out of the sea, the two lovely girls became transformed.  (more…)