Beach-cleaning is one of two topics that have been in my mind this week. The other one – and they make an unlikely combination – is what makes a story stick in your mind and eager for you to tell it.

The beach-cleaning came up because a recent episode of Springwatch on BBC 1 showed clips from TV coverage of the horrendous oil-spill off the Pembrokeshire coast that, some years ago, caused mayhem to sea-birds and coastal ecology. The area has long since recovered from that. But, as Springwatch pointed out, continual damage is being done by the plastics that get onto beaches and into seas. The message of the programme was simple: if you see plastic, pick it up, dispose of it properly.

Well, we’ve been in Pembrokeshire over Easter and this week, we ended a long walk along Newgale beach with quite a horde of stuff  – one huge piece of green plastic tarpaulin and one small bag full of bits  of plastic fishing line, including a tangled clump from the skeleton of a sea-bird that had obviously died from getting caught on it.

What’s found on beaches: a Scottish folktale

Another recent reason for thinking about what you find on beaches came up because of a Scottish folktale I came across ages ago in a book called Thistle and Thyme. In the story,  a young mother has lost her baby and when it turns out that the baby has been stolen by fairy folk, she is determined to get him back. But how? (more…)

A couple of days ago, I went into my optician’s. The receptionist looked rather surprised.  I said I’d come to see if they could fix my dark glasses. He said he’d literally just picked up the phone to ring me to say my new glasses were ready for picking up. ‘Uncanny,’ he said and I agreed. The fact of having to wait for my new glasses had been the reason for wearing the dark ones. But last night at the theatre one lens of the dark ones was suddenly gone at the interval. We scrabbled around under the seats and, fortunately, the missing lens was there, unbroken. Phew!

Synchronicity:

It’s always a strange thing, that sense of synchronicity or coincidence. I don’t know if you’ve noticed but it has come to the fore several times recently in comments readers of this blog have sent in. After last week, these comments gave me a tingling sense of a new kind of storytelling community – one that exists on the web.

For ages, it’s been a belief of mine that community and storytelling go together. A common interest in stories literally brings people together.  The weekend after next it will be the Annual Gathering of the Society for Storytelling, this year being held in Cardiff. When the revival of storytelling was beginning to gather momentum in this country, the SfS played an important part in forging links between storytellers and helping to support new ones. The same thing had happened with the monthly Drill Hall workshops I ran for ten years from the mid-80s to the mid-90s with my friend and colleague Karen Tovell. Common interests create community and in the case of the Drill Hall workshops, they also helped develop a shared way of working that could then be used with all kinds of community groups.

Storytelling gets people sharing ideas and making friends. This can happen in a one-off workshop or a course that lasts over a number of weeks. It can happen in storytelling clubs as attenders get to know each other or  in a classroom situation as children hear new aspects of each other in how they respond to stories. 

Stories across the world-wide web: (more…)

Without response, where would we storytellers be? I’d probably shrivel like the dried-up brown leaf that was on my doorstep the other morning, blown there no doubt by the winds of the previous night.

On Wednesday this week, I was at St Peter’s C of E Primary School in Ravenscourt Park. This was a new school for me except that its new head teacher used to book me at St Stephen’s School in Shepherd’s Bush where she previously worked. Some responses occurred in the course of the day which have stayed in my mind.

Identification

In my session for the Years 3 and 4 classes, I brought out my Rainbow Cloth (I often do). It brought some lovely responses, for instance that, if it transformed, it could become butterfly wings. I also told the story of how and where I’d bought it. ‘It comes from Africa,’ I began and in the small pause that followed, my eyes were drawn to two boys, both black, who were sitting together near the back. During my pause, one boy turned to the other, nodding slightly as if to say, ‘That’s like you.’ And at once, the other boy smiled with a look of such affirmation that I don’t want to forget it.

Questions (more…)

For any storyteller, it’s a heartening moment when you learn that a story you’ve told has succeeded in engaging a child. It’s even better when the story has become part of a kind of chain. You told it to a group of adults and it’s one of them that passed it on to the child concerned.

This week I had one such moment when I received the following message from Hilary Minns at Warwick University. Hilary has for many years been running a module on Stories and Storytelling for people pursuing Early Childhood studies. The story she refers to is one I’ve told there a number of times.

Hilary’s message:

A little story: one of my students has a group of seven children with special learning needs. Among them is a 6 year old autistic boy who, she says, dislikes stories intensely and who wriggles and squirms around at storytime. But she told him Mrs Wiggle and Mrs Waggle, complete with actions, and he was transfixed. He then asked her to make the characters into Mr Wiggle and Mr Waggle and said they had to change houses. At break time she observed this boy retelling the story to a friend!

  (more…)

Yesterday I spent a good part of the day on a train coming down to Wales. The reason for my trip? I’ve been invited to a 100th birthday celebration lunch. The person who has reached such a wonderful age lived with her family at the end of my street when I was growing up. Her husband ran the chemist’s shop on the corner. We children played with her children.

On the train, I was reminded of a piece of writing I did recently – not about birthdays but about being on trains. I don’t know if you find the same kind of thing when you’re on a train (and I think it’s not the same on buses or planes or in cars). My mind goes into itself. Often I find myself thinking about a story and that’s what I wrote about. I’d be fascinated to know if any of you who may read this blog have the same kind of experience.

Train-world dreaming: (more…)

You could play it as a game. ‘Associations’ you might call it. For instance, let’s start with the word ‘cloud’. Playing ‘Associations’, I might come up with the fact that I once knew a girl called Cloud. (‘What a beautiful name,’ I used to think.) Then again, each day when I open up my computer, on comes one of those irritating dialogue boxes: KnowHow Cloud. (‘Have you logged in to Cloud?’ it persists in asking.) Or am I remembering the Afrikaans saying I quoted here a few weeks ago: ‘And all the time we are being carried like great clouds across the sky.’

I don’t know what associations you’d put forward. Maybe you have none for Cloud. But as a storyteller, I do think it’s useful sometimes to stop and wonder. ‘ Why? What associations do I have with that story? Why do I like it so much? What is it about it that attracts me? Why am I so compelled to tell it?’

Following suit, I must ask myself why, towards the end of this week, I remembered a little story about a cloud I was once told? And why did I start thinking about it? Was it simply because I was walking down the street wondering what I’d write about today and happened to notice a distinctly shaped cloud in the sky? More than likely. Dense grey skies have been over our heads so often here in London lately (and here, thinking about what it may be like elsewhere, I must send special greetings to the growing number of readers of this blog who live far, far away, in Australia, New Zealand, India, Brazil). When the sky is one dense grey mass, there are none of those separate clouds where you might see particular colours and shapes. ‘Look, do you see the dog in the sky?’ ‘And what about that great bird on the wing!’ Or could that cloud be a boy?

The Boy Who Became A Cloud (more…)

Those little stories that make a particular point can sometimes prove tricky. The last few days, the weather has been lovely in London – cold but sunny enough to bring a smile to our faces and quite a change from incessant grey skies and rain. On one of my walks, remembering the great winds that blew over Christmas, I thought about that famed competition between Sun and Wind.

Sun and Wind fight it out:

Just as children sometimes do, and sometimes even grown-ups too, Sun and Wind were having an argument about which of them is stronger. Sun proclaimed:  ‘It’s definitely me.’ Wind thought differently, ‘No, it’s me.’

Sun and Wind decided to test out their claims.

‘See that young man walking down that street,’ said Sun. ‘I guarantee I can get his jacket off him quicker than you.’

‘It’s a deal,’ said Wind. ‘But I’m going to win.’

Without wasting a moment, Wind began blowing. Before he could even start roaring, the young man walking down the street pulled up the zip on his jacket. Then as Wind began roaring, he put his arms round himself, drawing his jacket even closer. (more…)

Keep a storytelling notebook? It’s a good idea. It can become a little storehouse for all kinds of odd and wise sayings, proverbs, tongue twisters, thoughts and poems. I looked in mine the other day hoping to find the words of a song I simply  couldn’t remember. Annoyingly, my notebook didn’t yield them. Even more annoyingly, I couldn’t find them anywhere else – not for ages and ages. 

And meantime? I’d so much enjoyed going back through my notebook,  I decided to pick out some of the things there for this week’s blog. I do hope you enjoy them. Even more, I hope you’ll find one or other item useful  – perhaps as part of introducing a storytelling session, perhaps as a filler between two stories or maybe simply as an entertainment, something to say over supper. 

So in no particular order (as they say on Strictly Come Dancing), here they are. And by the way, the photos accompanying them this week are of some very gorgeous art that has recently gone up on street walls near me – literally by the way.

A daft joke:

    Two old women fell down a hole. Question: How did they get out?

    Answer: One of them had a ladder in her tights. (more…)

On 19 November, the Guardian newspaper ran a very interesting piece about the author Will Self leading a walking tour of Bristol. On the tour, evidently, he was encouraging participants to take in the uniqueness of our ordinary urban places. ‘Feel the wall,’ he urged, ‘its coldness, its integrity, its quiddity, its this-ness.’

I like Will Self’s words. (Quiddity feels especially good.) For it’s true. You can make what you think of as a commonplace walk and, if you really look, you can see so much. It can be like walking through stories. Often, the full stories are hidden. You end up wanting to know more.

Last Sunday, I took a bus from Brixton to the Kennington/Vauxhall area with a plan for a variation on something else I do from time to time, namely set out from my house on what I call a spoke. This means choosing a direction, then walking briskly for an hour in that direction and seeing how far I get before taking a bus back home. On Sunday, my aim was just to walk around an area that is not familiar to me, seeing whatever there was to be seen.  And I did see so many interesting things – the huge round building that houses the Oval Cricket Ground, the site of the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens that were such a draw for Londoners back in the 18th century, several little art galleries I felt I’d like to visit (all closed, alas, because it was Sunday) and some delightful-looking community cafes.

But the treasure was Bonnington Square. Coming towards it unawares, my camera was already clicking, senses increasingly struck by the greenery and flowers outside front doors and along the pavements.  Admiring the inventive ways in which things had been planted, I then came upon the garden. What a miracle of creation! Information boards on the outside fence had caught my interest even before I went into the garden as they told me how, some years ago,  this small area of land had been rescued, derelict, from Local Authority plans to build upon it. The surrounding community had rallied to what they called the Paradise Project and, as I saw when I went inside, the garden they made became a little haven of beauty with a play space for children and several different areas where people can sit in sanctuary below lovely trees surrounded by plants. (more…)

How did it go? Most storytellers, I guess, look back at any event they’ve been involved with, formal or informal, and consider if it lived up to how they’d have liked it to be. For me, that process happened twice yesterday. The morning held a long interview on Skype with a storyteller in Bangalore in India. I’ve never been a great aficionado of Skype but this conversation was really magic. My interviewer’s list of questions was very much to the point and during it, she asked what advice I’d have for a new storyteller. My answer included what long ago became a motto I gave to myself: forgive yourself if you feel your storytelling didn’t go as well as you’d have hoped. There is always a next time and you have to learn from your mistakes.

The afternoon involved the birthday party I spoke briefly about in last week’s blog.  In the event, 14 girls turned up, one or two of them rather quiet, the rest of them very excited. An initial activity involved them thinking up a magic power, a magic food and a magic creature. Then it was over to the storytelling. After a name game to help all  feel included and an introductory story about a frog that happily made them all laugh, we went immediately into that story from Grimms’ Other Tales, the story of Catharinella.  The children settled into it quickly, though I realised from the looks on one or two faces that even at 7 years old, the idea of an ogre that might eat you up can feel a tad alarming. Where necessary, you have to go easy.  Then as we went on, I felt really glad that, in my advance preparations, I’d  become aware of some unresolved features in the story as written. My thoughts about how to resolve them proved very productive and that felt nice.

The story in brief: (more…)