Finding a line is what I do. But what does focusing on the line leave out? Last week’s story here in this blog was about two girls who were transformed by the King of the Deep into seagulls, eternally destined thereafter to fly between land and sea.

The two birds began to make a little line in my mind. By Thursday, delving into nursery rhymes for a piece I am writing, I found myself considering that clever little verse, so fascinating to children when it’s done with hand actions:

Pete and Repete sat on a wall.
Pete flew off.
Who was left?
Repete.

There are numerous variants of this rhyme. But whatever one is used, one thing is certain. With children, it has to be repeated again and again.  And again. So, my child’s heart still present within me, it was lovely for me yesterday morning when Paul called me to the bedroom window in our house here in Wales. Crows were flying into and over the big old tree in our neighbour’s back yard. Always they arrived in pairs, settling in the tree, then perhaps moving position, then apparently in the shared whim of a moment sailing out into the windy grey air. Paul commented on how they must be enjoying their aerodynamics – or was it aerobatics? (more…)

I don’t believe in reincarnation. Not in any specific way. Yet I’m still inclined to proclaim that I’m going to come back as a seagull. I just love the way seagulls ride the air currents. I’m wooed by the haunting sound of their call, how it always speaks of the sea even as it flies over land.

On Thursday in North Pembrokeshire, I was watching the tide rippling onto the foreshore down at the little harbour of Abercastle, (Abercastell in Welsh). The ocean beyond distinctly heaving, I watched a seagull on the wet, stony beach. It stood among the reflections for ages, its eye sometimes turned out to sea, sometimes onto the spot where it stood.

Watching the seagull has brought back to mind a story I once came across in a collection of stories from Wales. It’s a ‘How the Seagull Became’ kind of story. Details in the version I read, including the names given to its characters, have long since gone from my mind. This has never bothered me. Because I feel deeply unhappy with a central aspect of it, it’s not a story I’ve ever felt inclined to retell. Yet – and doesn’t this happen sometimes? – the story still holds me a bit in its thrall. (more…)

The life of the storyteller and story-writer has been a fruitful one in my experience of it. At the same time, I have to acknowledge that sometimes there’s a feeling of surfeit. Too many people going by, too much awareness of all the stories they’re part of, too many ifs and buts in every direction. And with all that, not enough time for digesting things and making something of them, not enough real satisfaction.

That’s how I feel right now after two months of hospital appointments when I’ve been one of so many people walking in and out of  the hospital’s foyer or sitting waiting to be seen by a doctor or a nurse. In hospitals, it’s as if the whole world is swishing around you as you try to deal with your own main story yet are aware of being profoundly distracted from what you consider to be your own real life.

That’s how it is. That’s how it’s still going to be for me for a while. Yet over the next fortnight, there’ll be some respite. A fortnight in Wales feels like a blissful prospect providing some welcome fresh air and rest before the three weeks of radiotherapy treatments that will form the last part of the treatment for my breast cancer.

An odd little coincidence

So it feels rather strange that yesterday an odd little coincidence occurred in my life. I love coincidences. They make good stories. I don’t believe they necessarily have profound meaning. The probability factors in the world around us may just as well account for some or all. Yet I do generally think that coincidences have value. The value is simply that they make us notice them. They give us points of meaning and, because human beings appreciate meaning, we realise the value of noticing.

So yesterday I was in Guy’s Hospital yet again for the CT scan which was needed for setting up my radiotherapy arrangements. At the end of the session, I was given the list of dates and times for the fifteen sessions that are to start in three weeks’ time. I looked at the list and then I smiled at the lovely radiographer who’d been seeing to me.

‘I have an extraordinary little story to tell you,’ I said. ‘Seven years ago, I had to have radiotherapy as the final part of the treatment I was given for nasal lymphoma. The last of those radiotherapy sessions happened on October 23rd which is my birthday. So now I’ve just looked at the list you’ve given me for the appointments I have to have this time round. And what do I see? The last date on the list is – guess what? –  October 23rd which is my birthday.’

‘Wow,’ said the radiographer. ‘That’s amazing.’ I agree. It is. But it’s not as amazing as that the sun comes up every morning even when it doesn’t shine through the clouds. Nor is it as amazing as the skill of surgeons and radiographers or the friendship that good friends show. What’s also very fine is a nice cup of tea.

PS: My photo this week is of the South American story-doll I was once given by Kevin Crossley-Holland after I’d edited a paper he’d written for publication by the Society for Storytelling. The doll seems to me to acknowledge not only the multiplicity of the tales which are part of a storytelling life but also the potential burden the storyteller carries in carrying them around.

A most poignant story came into my knowledge this week. It has made me realise all over again why storytelling workshops became so important a part of my work and why I’ve always tried to take an open approach to storytelling with children and adults. It’s quite simply the huge importance of giving people a voice.

The story cropped up in a very fine book I finished reading during the week. Black Diamonds by Catherine Bailey is a history of several generations of the Fitzwilliam family, the fabulously wealthy owners of Wentworth House in the North East of England, and of the desperately poor mine-workers in the collieries they owned. One of many incidental stories in the book is of the son of a poor young woman by the name of May Bower who lived and worked in Wentworth village. Her son Edgar was believed to have been one of the numerous illegitimate children fathered by Billy Fitzwilliam, the 7th Earl Fitzwilliam.

A man without a voice:

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Anyone who’s read A Long Run in Short Shorts, my recently self-published book, will know that synchronicities of all kinds are one of my interests. How do they come about? What do they mean?  Wowee! Thinking about two comments that arrived this week on two different postings I’d written, one last year, one this, produced a connection that made my mind go ping!

Two Comments: No. 1

The first comment to arrive was about the haunting poem, The Grey Dog of Rhu Arisaig, which I’d put into my blog of August 20th, 2016.  I’d seen the poem in a frame on a wall in Arisaig on the west coast of Scotland and, a number of times thereafter, had made it the centre of storytelling sessions with older children. Written by Roy Ferguson, the poem refers to the turbulent time of the Highland Clearances when crofters were cleared off the land by land-owners. Evidently, one of the local families that were evacuated by boat from Arisaig accidentally left behind a favourite collie dog. Afterwards, it was often said in the area that, at dusk on certain evenings, the grey ghost of the dog would appear, searching the shoreline for the family that had left it behind. (more…)

Looking anew at a story in the light of new information can cause a bit of reflection. This happened to me this week. I’d been looking through my files of stories and had come across one I like a lot that I’ve sometimes told to younger children. It’s about a tiger and a mouse and you very likely know it already.

The Tiger and the Mouse:

So this tiger is marching through the forest when he almost trips over a little mouse.

‘Ha,’ says the tiger. ‘You got in my way. I’m going to eat you up.’

‘Oh, don’t do that,’ the little mouse replies. ‘You never know, one day I might be able to help you.’

‘You? Help me?’ blares the tiger. ‘You’re very small and weak. I’m very big and strong. How could you ever help me?’

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A story I heard a long time ago told of a man who, for some reason I can’t now remember, had to make a very long journey. After a long time of walking along the road he needed to take, he began to feel very weary. Even as he became dispirited, however, he came upon another man who was walking the same path as him. That other man proved a good companion, constantly cheering him both with his talk and his companionable silence and helping him when he got into difficulties. Even so, with such a long way to go, the traveller became more and more tired, so much so that, one night, he felt he could no longer continue. Everything became a blur as he passed out.  (more…)

What’s in a story? Things that are normally hidden? Things of remarkable beauty? Keys to the future? One of my main occupations at present is writing a book about doing stories  with Early Years children. It’s a subject I’ve thought about a lot about over the years because I’ve done so much of it, not only with children themselves but with their teachers and parents too.  Writing the book has been bringing back to my mind all kinds of little tales. Here are three.

Story One:

This story was reported to me by my storyteller friend, Debbie Guneratne. It’s about an incident that occurred to her some time ago during a period when she was in Australia, working in a hospital for children.

One day, she started telling a little boy in the hospital the story of The Yellow Blob. Debbie had heard this particular tale (it’s one I created) on a storytelling course I’d been running. The little boy was a child who didn’t speak and his attention span was very poor. So Debbie was delighted to see that he kept listening intently as he heard how the Yellow Blob lived in an entirely yellow world until one day when he climbed to the top of a yellow hill and saw a blue lake below.

Suddenly at this point of the story, and much to Debbie’s regret, a nurse turned up to take the little boy for some treatment he was due to receive. Debbie was naturally very sorry he hadn’t been able to stay to hear the end of the story. Come the end of the day, however, Debbie was on her way out of the hospital when she heard a voice calling her name. Turning round, she saw the nurse hand in hand with that same little boy standing at the top of the hospital steps.

‘Debbie, stop,’ the nurse called out. ‘He wants to hear the end of the story.’ (more…)

I’m still reading Emily Dickinson’s poems. There are an enormous number – 1775 in all – and they require pondering. Apart from the fact that their punctuation is eccentric, their meaning is often ambiguous and all the richer for that. The poem below is a story poem, which is why I decided to make it the subject of this week’s blog. It has made me think a lot about the differences between the language of poems and the language of told stories.

The language of poetry is condensed, rich in metaphor and image in a way that the storyteller’s language rarely is. Told stories have specially chosen details that alert the mind, turns of phrase that please the ear. They have momentum and also at times a kind of ambiguity that makes you wonder what is going on. But the two modes are different. At the end of the Emily Dickinson poem here, the door of the house is open. It’s early morning. The sun is just rising. But who or what has opened the door? Did robbers really come and leave it open? Or is it the sun that has opened the door, perhaps not literally but to our attention? (more…)

Do stories need explanation? And what kind of explanations might be needed for a story from an unfamiliar culture? I did wonder a bit about these issues while preparing The Tale of Farizad of the Rose’s Smile for telling to the older children in Wolfscastle School this last Monday. No wide cultural diversity there except for that between Welsh and English. Probably little awareness of Muslim culture. No great variety among children’s names. Certainly nothing like Farid, Faruz and Farizad.

But what explanation does a good story need? I plumped for just going ahead, telling the story without explanation. First I’d told the wonderfully daft story of Shemi and the Enormous Cabbage. Older they might be but they enjoyed that a lot. Then I came to the Farizad story. This is in a very different vein and how it begins is rather a shock. For it tells how, over the course of the three years following the marriage of the King of Persia to the youngest of three sisters, the king is told that his queen has given birth to a dead dog, a dead cat and a dead mouse. Can this be true? No, these are just lies. The queen has actually given birth to three babies and it’s her jealous sisters who have made up the stories.

Would they stick with it? (more…)