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…)

A young woman asked me the other day: ‘How do you end a story?’ It’s a very good question! The first point I made in reply was the one I feel to be the most important.  

Facing up to the silence

In storytelling, you have to recognise from the very beginning that there’s going to have to be an end to whatever tale you are telling. It may come after ten minutes, an hour, several hours or even days. But an end will have to arrive and after the end, there will be a silence. Unavoidable? Yes. Uncomfortable? Only if you’re not ready for it. Long or short, that ensuing silence should be part of the magic. Be ready for it. It’s one of the interstices between the world of story and the world of here and now. There’s a lot of power in it. Sometimes you have to be brave to face it.

Preparing the last sentence (more…)

This last week has been full of ups and downs for me – cooker problems, tap problems, computer problems, all kinds of problems. The weather has been up and down too – wet and windy and very chilly, then sunny and a bit less chilly.  So I think it’s the right time for my favourite  tongue-twister. Maybe I’ve introduced you to this one before but it seems to suit with my week.  After all, weather is not only that stuff outside. It can refer to how you are feeling too.

So please get practising this: 

Whether the weather be fine or whether the weather be not, we’ll weather the weather, whatever the weather, whether it be fine or not.

The note of determination is me being optimistic!

Next week will be my report on my storytelling day at St Stephen’s School next Wednesday. (more…)

Well, last week’s giraffe was described as Bringer of Smiles in a comment from Jean. And Bringer of Smiles has reminded me of the one Christmas cracker joke that brought a smile to our table 

The Christmas Cracker joke:

Question:  What do you call a queue of men at the barber’s?

Answer: A barbecue.

Groan! It’s like that lovely little riddle I heard once from Taffy Thomas which also depends on a nice play of words.

The bee riddle: (more…)

Riddle-me-See: this week it’s eyes. Riddle-me-See is a deliciously gruesome story. When I told it, ages back, to storyteller Kate Portal who is blind, she said she loved it, she’d add it to her collection of eye stories. But first, a word about the Comments that flooded in response to last week’s Blog.

Empathetic, innovative, optimistic, creative, sentimental, thoughtful and deliciously perfumed: so many qualities made themselves felt in the answers to Riddle-me-Rose. Look back and you’ll see.

The answer to the question – how did the gardener know which rose was his wife? – is, of course, down-to-earth. He’s a gardener. He knows that, in early morning, the blossoms in the rose-bed will sparkle with dew. The rose that is his wife does not. She’s been inside the cottage with him long enough for any dew-drops to disappear.

Karen, I think, might have known or guessed but gave her answer an innovative twist in making dew-drops into tears. Delicious clouds of perfume emanated from nearly everyone else – Jean, Claire, Sal, Larry – and, Larry, the Shakespearean reference feels very apt. Liz thought he knew his wife by looking into the eyes of the flower, for it’s in the eye that you see another person’s soul. As for Annalee’s suggestion – that the wife was the rose with a name-tag – it immediately reminded me of that extraordinary occasion some ten years after I got married when, in the course of weeding my garden, I pulled out a piece of columbine and saw, hanging from its root,  the wedding ring I’d lost eight years before. The ring glistened. I felt amazed.

Eyes: a riddle (more…)

The Handel Rose (yellow), Paul’s Scarlet (red) and Mary Rose (pink) are all positively flourishing in our garden right now, only slightly battered by this week’s heavy showers. They made me think about  roses as my theme for this week’s blog. Or how about eyes?  I’ve seen several lively pairs of eyes in recent comings and goings that started me trying to identify what was so appealing about them.

Yesterday, I got my answer: when walking down the back of Whitehall, two stories popped into my mind. One was about roses, the other about eyes. And several links between them became immediately clear. Both I first heard from other storytellers. Both are great for telling to older children or adults. Both have a riddling aspect. Suddenly it was obvious what I should do. This week, I’ll give you roses. Next week, eyes. (more…)

“The world is very beautiful and it’s very sad I will have to die.” So said the grandmother of José Saramago whose house on Lanzarote we recently went to see. The grandmother was very old when she said that to him and he was still a child. I feel I know what she meant for this week, down in Wales, the hedgerows, the sky, the bird-song, the bluebells – all have been so beautiful, I can’t bear the thought of ever leaving them.

Tears

Tears are close to laughter and they’ve both been present several times in recent days. Tears were there after the Memorial Service to our friend Simon Hoggart in which the whole gathered throng were kept constantly laughing by the many tributes to him, all in some way or other recalling his sense of humour.

Tears have been there too on hearing about the illness of a number of friends. Yet, as I said, tears and laughter often come close together. Two people have remarked on this to me in the last few days. One was speaking in general about storytelling when he said, “If you can get them laughing at the beginning, you can get them crying at the end.” Then a member of the Welsh class in St David’s which had invited me to go and talk to them about storytelling this last Wednesday made a similar point with a vivid personal recollection. In Botswana back in the mid-60s, he said, people in the place where he was living would gather every Friday evening beneath a very big tree (same tree each week) and they’d listen to the storyteller (same storyteller each week, a man who wore a jacket with many medals on it). At first, they’d be uproariously laughing. By the end, they’d often be weeping. (more…)

Today is St David’s Day (more on that later) and also the last of my current series. Getting Participation has focussed on Early Years children but is applicable, I believe, to all ages. Enjoyment and relish of words; the value of vocal tone and pauses; the enormous power of silence – all such things can make an enormous difference in storytelling. On other previous occasions, I’ve written about rhythms, refrains and rhymes as vital in helping children to feel included and also, of course, about props.

But today I want to write about the over-riding point of all this, namely why participation is worth bothering about and the value of working to achieve it. I have a storytelling anecdote which might help me convey what I’d like to say.

Why it’s worth it:

One time I was telling stories to a class of 14 and 15 year-olds in a Welsh School in mid Wales. We were in an otherwise empty room for the storytelling. The pupils were sitting on cushions on the floor and looking very relaxed. Some began moving onto their stomachs, their heads propped up on their upraised hands. Suddenly, surprisingly, right in the middle of the story, one of the boys moved onto one arm, lifted his head up and spoke to the room. ‘What’s going on here?’ he said. ‘What’s happening to us?’ (more…)

My Blog-break was in Italy. And very lovely it was too. Evenings, we lit candles in the Umbrian villa we’d rented with our group of friends. The first couple of days, there were dramatic rain storms and a lot of wind. The rest of the time, the weather was hot and getting hotter. Lovely. And there were stunning views, a garden full of flowers including my favourite Love In The Mist, and when we went visiting hill-top towns, there were intriguing sights to photograph. Plus gorgeous food.

Every now and then while away, especially in the evenings when we lit those candles, I thought about the little riddle I’d included in my last Blog.

The riddle:

How can you get fire wrapped in paper?

The answer:

The answer is obvious when you know it and most obviously satisfying when you see it made real, brought out in the form of an object. For the answer is a paper lantern. The candle inside is the fire. The paper around it makes the lantern.

The story:

So clever, so simple, the riddle plays a key part in a Chinese folk-tale I was told just before I went off to Italy. The teller was Nada, one of the excellent people on my Kensington Palace parents’ workshop. She’d found the tale in a picture-book version and had recognised it at once as a good story to tell. Besides, she’d taken the trouble not only to remember the story but to equip herself with a good-looking bag for the props that she’d prepared.

Out of this bag, at the appropriate moment, came a lovely Chinese lantern. And shortly after – for as you’ll see, a second riddle is also contained in the story – she brought out her second prop. This was equally simple, equally magical.

Read on and you’ll see what it was. (more…)

Have you ever felt overwhelmed with far too many different things to do? That’s how things are with me right now. So today’s Blog is very short.

Riddle:

How can you get fire wrapped in paper?

The answer:

The answer is in an excellent story that was told last week by one of the parents on my Kensington Palace course.

I’ll tell it to you soon.

Next week and the following week, I’m taking a Blog-break. See you again on 22nd June. (more…)