A young friend of mine was still a teenager when he said to me once, ‘When you tell me a story, the room goes all still.’ How time passes! He’s nearly 40 now.

But I know what he means. When Helen East was at Waterstone’s in Piccadilly telling her London Tales  last week (her book of these is published by The History Press), there was a palpable sense during the storytelling of moving into a different place and time.

A welcome gift?

So what’s to be done when time feels harassed, weighed down by anxieties and things that have to be done? When that’s so – as this week for me – I try and remember Mink, that hero figure in North American Indian legend who brought the sun to the people. Later, according to another story of him – and I see that I told it in this blog four years ago on November 19th, 2011 – Mink also brought time to the land. But after he stole that clock from the white settlers’ house, there was a big downside to the new possession.  From then on, time became something that had to be managed. The story warns that we have to be mindful. Without care, time can dominate.

A welcome gift?

A wonderful counterbalance comes in those old Welsh folktales where someone sits under a tree to listen to the sound of  birds singing and, wholly enchanted, becomes oblivious of time going by.

Robyn Meredydd is one such fellow in Carmarthenshire lore. It’s a lovely summer’s day, the sycamore tree is in full leaf and the bird is singing so sweetly. But when Robyn eventually  comes to himself, the tree is withered and dead, his farmhouse when he reaches it is covered in ivy and the old man who comes to the door turns out to be his own nephew who confesses that when he was a child, he’d once heard about an uncle called Robyn who had disappeared.

Time is a puzzle. Yet it seems to me that any of it that’s spent listening to the singing of birds is refreshingly worth it –  one of life’s inestimable pleasures. It restores a sense of calm and the confidence to think that, after all, life’s problems can be managed. Certainly it’s a whole lot better than, last night, the sound of the foxes screeching the night away out in the back.

 P.S. I hope you’ll agree that, in their way, both my photos this week are symbols of time. (more…)

Do I dare call myself a storyteller? Hallowe’en is a popular time for storytelling. Yet I absolutely hate Hallowe’en – not because of the spectres, witches, zombies and demons but because of the commercialisation. Fancy-dress clothes get hired, kids run round knocking on doors, then look at you blankly when you appear, not sure what to say or quite why they’re there.

Baba Yaga

I don’t like Hallowe’en but I like Baba Yaga, the ugly old hag of Russian fairytale. She seems entirely the sort of ambivalent character we could do well to remember at this time of the year. A creature who inhabits the shadows, she lives in the depths of the forest in a hut with chicken legs that spins endlessly round. To get in to the hut, indeed to survive Baba Yaga at all, you have to know the correct thing to say. According to Afanas’ev, the Russian story-collector, she uses her very long nose to poke the fire and her sharpened iron teeth to devour young, tender victims.

But it’s often possible to outwit Baba Yaga. In fact, sometimes you feel she’s got something extremely insightful about her – for if you have courage and a good, kind heart, she ultimately respects it and will spare you. And when she spares you, you will afterwards be all the stronger for it.

HAG

Last week, I encountered Baba Yaga when I went with one of my god-daughters to see a play called HAG at the Soho Theatre in London. Produced by The Wrong Crowd company, the play generally followed the pattern of Vasilisa the Beautiful, one of the most well-known of Baba Yaga stories. It made strong use of puppets but was by no means aimed at young children. From its hilariously satirical approach to the stepmother character and her two mocking daughters (these were shown as a bodiless, twin-headed puppet), I could sense how it would appeal to the teenage audiences for whom it’s apparently at least partly intended. The play’s main character is a sweet-natured girl whose mother has died. With so heartless, vain and cruel a stepmother, she has in consequence to face some of the worst demons this world can throw up.

Coming out of HAG, it was particularly nice to encounter a large group of young women who, it turned out, had been brought to see the play by their English teacher. They had obviously got a lot from it.

So let me recommend Baba Yaga stories for audiences young and old. Plenty can be found on the Internet and, for young children, there are a number in picture-book form. In these, quite suitably for the age-group, Baba Yaga is usually presented simply as a witch who has to be fled. HAG reminded me that Baba Yaga’s significance can be more complex and, as such, her appeal far wider.

And meantime remember your clocks …

Yes, do remember to turn your clocks back on Saturday night or Sunday morning.

I well remember the occasion when Paul and I were in Italy on holiday and, over several days towards the end of our holiday, were surprised to notice that our hotel dining room was virtually empty each time we turned up there for dinner. Not until the morning that we left did we understand why.

Because of the earliness of our departure, we’d organised with the hotel-owner the night before that he would be up early in the morning to sort out our bill. We got up. He wasn’t there. Indeed, he had to be sent for and when we finally saw him coming up the road, he was still doing up his trousers and repeatedly calling out ‘Mama Mia’ in a long-suffering voice as if he couldn’t quite believe what these mad British people were up to. Shortly afterwards, we realised why. Days before, the clocks had gone back. We’d been completely oblivious.

Got any similar stories? The theme’s a good one for story-sharing. (more…)