Storytelling Starters ~ Life’s gifts
Saturday, September 4th, 2021Isn’t it strange how, from time to time, something very appropriate but not expected turns up out of the blue – as if to sympathise with a need you’re feeling? Well, this morning that’s what happened. Somehow or other – had I been moving notebooks around some days ago and thus changing the arrangement of things on a shelf? – a very attractive-looking notebook was suddenly visible, sitting on its own on a shelf in the big cupboard in my workroom. I picked it up and saw that on it was a label I’d put there – Tobago 2005.
Well, I’ve only been to Tobago the once and of course it was to spend a week storytelling at the invitation of the great Grace Hallworth whose funeral took place this week. I wasn’t able to go to her funeral (the stomach cancer is still causing trouble) but Paul did go and, indeed, did a reading at it of a tribute that he and I had put together. Meantime, I stayed at home in bed, revisiting my thoughts and memories of her.
One of the memories that came to mind was her account of a time when, at home alone in the house that she and her husband Trevor kept in Tobago, there was a knock at the door. When she went to the door, it was no friend but a man with a machete. Grace, redoubtable as always, shouted at him and chased him through the garden and not only out on to the road but down the road as well. He’s lucky he was able to get away from the beating and the telling-off that, had she caught him, I feel sure she would have delivered. (more…)