A beachcomber is what I’ve become. These days, when back in Pembrokeshire and going to a beach for a walk, I go with a bag and spend some time walking along the tide-line picking up bits of plastic rubbish. It’s amazing how much gets found – large and small lengths of plastic twine, sodden old plastic bags, broken flip-flops, fishing gear. Plastic is poison to sea-creatures. It is good to get rid of it.

Yesterday, collecting along the long length of Newgale beach, it occurred to me that this beachcombing is not unlike something I do as a storyteller. I don’t know if you do the same – namely, collect odd bits of story. They may be overheard pieces of conversation, sometimes perhaps just a single exclamation. Or they may be odd coincidences that happen over the course of a day or a week.

A hot-water bottle from the past: 

For instance, at an event in my native Fishguard at the beginning of this week, I met a young Welsh woman who’d also grown up in the town. As well as making me feel very happy by recounting the effect my storytelling had had on a young pupil of hers some years ago (always nice to hear such a thing), she recalled the person I knew as Aunty Mali although she wasn’t a blood relation. This young woman’s particular memory was of Aunty Mali often turning up at chapel in the winter with a hot water bottle for putting on her knees beneath a small rug she also carried. (more…)

OK, I admit it. Over the last few weeks, I’ve become a devoted football fan. Obviously that’s because I’m Welsh and the Wales football team did so brilliantly in the Euros. It wasn’t easy seeing them get knocked out against Portugal in their semi-final this Wednesday. Yet, especially in this post-Brexit world, it’s an inspiration that the team believes so much in the strength of playing as a team, they pay such high regard to their fans and the support they get from them, they speak with such warmth of their country and they have been so good-humoured during their time away in France.

Besides, Gareth Bale is drop-dead gorgeous, both to look at and in his manner. I’m not sure I’ll keep following football as avidly now as I have been, but I’m sure I’ll be following him and the wonderful Welsh team.

It’s surely all this football stuff that caused a familiar phrase to pop up in my mind this week and with it the story from which it comes. The phrase is ‘extendable legs’. And the story it comes from is one I told in this blog on 21st July, 2012. To read a full version of it, you can look back at that blog posting. Simply fill in the words Chinese Brothers in the Storyworks Blog References slot on the top left side of the blog. Then press Search and up it will come.

The story itself is one children love to remember. An example occurred earlier this summer when I said to the two children in a family we know that I had a special story to tell them. Because the 10-year old sister is potty about mermaids, this was going to be a mermaid story. But somehow or other the promise of a story immediately made the 7-year old brother remember  The Five Chinese Brothers which I’d told to them it must be three years ago. Volunteering that they still had the colourful Chinese pin-cushion I’d taken them as a present to go with the story, he started recalling the magic powers that are at its centre.

The Five Chinese Brothers: (more…)

It’s sensuous and sexy. It can be a crowning glory and it can be a nightmare, dreadful if you lose it, awful if you can’t get it right. And this week, it came up as a theme when, I can’t remember why, I was recounting how my Aunty Mali (subject of my storytelling piece, Travels With My Welsh Aunt) would remove the hairs from her hair brush after she’d finished her nightly brushing. Then she’d carefully twist the hairs together into a loop before twisting them into a piece of tissue paper which she then threw into her waste bin.

‘My mother used to do the same,’ said the new friend with whom I was having coffee. ‘Not the bit about the tissue paper. But the bit about removing the hair from the brush and making it into a twist.’ Conversation then turned to the interesting observation, put forward by her scientist husband, that each strand of hair with its root is a record of your DNA. This seemed to make some kind of sense of my Mali’s oft-repeated saying: ‘Scatter your hair and you throw away your thoughts.’

This then reminded me  – it’s the way my mind works! – of a conversation which had occurred on the occasion of Enchanted Evening, the evening of songs and stories that Paul and I did in Fishguard on June 15th. (And yes, we’re now planning another similar evening, in fact two – one back in Fishguard, one in London.)

A memory of hair:

Out of the blue, a woman who stayed on for the supper after Enchanted Evening surprised me very much by saying, ‘I know you.’ Perhaps not as surprising as all that: I’ve had a long association with Fishguard having lived there for the first fourteen years of my life.  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I was a Learning Assistant at the Junior School when you came to us to tell stories.’ But then the real surprise emerged. (more…)

If you go to Cornwall and enter the church in the small village of Zennor, you will be able to see a mermaid carved into the end of a bench. The carving is in memory of a famous story which I first came to know when it was told by my very good friend, storyteller Sal Tonge. The story was first noted down in 1873 by Cornish folklorist William Bottrell and it has since appeared in lots of written versions in poetry as well as prose. You may know it already. But it’s well worth being reminded of it. In my experience, it fascinates children and adults.

The Mermaid of Zennor:

In the church choir in Zennor, Matthey Trewella was known as one of the best of the singers. He was also very popular and very nice-looking. Every Sunday, the young girls in the church would cast longing glances towards him, each one hoping he was singing especially to her.

One day when the service had already begun, the people in church heard the squeak of the church door opening (sound effects are very good here). A faint wind blew in (more sounds) and then they heard the sound of soft footsteps coming into the church. Each person who looked to see who it was saw what they thought was a woman, head bent, in a pew at the back. Her hair was shrouded in a beautiful cloak. Every time she raised her head slightly, Matthey Trewella caught a glimpse of lovely pink cheeks and red, red lips. At once, he was fascinated. (more…)

First things, my very great thanks to everyone who came along to Waterstone’s in Piccadilly this last Thursday evening to attend my storytelling session, From the Land of the Magic.  Old friends were there and readers of this blog were there as well as a good number of people I didn’t know. The atmosphere was really good and I thoroughly enjoyed it all. Thanks to June Peters for presenting the occasion and saying such nice things about me and thanks to everyone for such lovely support.  

Last week, I told the tiny tale of the fisherman who lets down his anchor and then is astonished to see a little chap climbing up the anchor rope to inform him angrily that the anchor has gone through his sitting-room ceiling. Another comparable story – in one sense dramatically different – appears in a piece of folk-lore recorded by the extraordinary folk-story collector, Sabine Baring-Gould who lived from 1834 to 1924. Baring-Gould was a parson and much else besides.  The piece that follows is transcribed from one of his many books,  A Book of Folk-Lore, which was first published in 1914.

An anchor from the sky:

‘On a certain feast-day in Great Britain, when the congregation came pouring out of church, they saw to their surprise an anchor let down from above the clouds, attached to a rope. The anchor caught in a tombstone; and though those above shook the cable repeatedly, they could not disengage it. Then the people heard voices above the clouds discussing apparently the propriety of sending someone down to release the flukes of the anchor, and shortly after they saw a sailor swarming down the cable.

Before he could release the anchor he was laid hold of; he gasped and collapsed, as though drowning in the heavy air about the earth. After waiting about an hour, those in the aerial vessel cut the rope, and it fell down. The anchor was hammered out into the hinges and straps of the church door, where, according to Gervase (of Tilbury) they were to be seen.’

By the way, Wikipedia informs me that Gervase of Tilbury was a lawyer, statesman and writer who lived from about 1150 to 1228.

Another anchor from the sky:

Another disconcertingly similar story, though with a very different and thought-provoking ending, appears in a poem by the great Irish poet, Seamus Heaney. Entitled Lightenings, the poem is part of a sequence in his book, Seeing Things, published in 1991. The episode it describes apparently happened in Clonmacnoise in Ireland: 

 The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise
 Were all at prayers inside the oratory
 A ship appeared above them in the air.

 The anchor dragged along behind so deep
 It hooked itself into the altar rail
 And then, as the big hull rocked to a standstill,

 A crewman shinned and grappled down the rope
 And struggled to release it. But in vain.
 ‘This man can’t bear our life here and will drown,’

The abbot said, ‘unless we help him.’ So
They did, the freed ship sailed, and the man climbed back 
Out of the marvellous as he had known it.

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That’s it for this week where it seemed right to have photos of nothing but clouds. Next week will be the last in my sequence of anchor stories. 

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As promised, here’s a picture from Wales to hope you’ve had a very good Christmas and to wish you more happy times between now and New Year.

The photo was taken on Christmas Eve on Whitesands Beach. 

In reality, it’s a jelly fish, one of many on the wave-worn beach.

To us, it looks like a sweetly-smiling face!

Look forward to seeing you Next Year. (more…)

Sometimes it’s the personal story we have to tell. Mine today is about the milestone I passed this week when I went to University College Hospital for my six-monthly check-up. Five and a half years ago, I’d been diagnosed with lymphoma. The treatment I received was excellent but tough because this particular lymphoma was sited just under my brain. Now, just over five years have gone by since my treatment was completed and, at this week’s check-up, I was given a complete discharge – of course, with the welcome proviso that, if any worries appear in the future, I can get back in touch right away.

No more check-ups? It’s quite a thing and of course we (that’s Paul and me) had to have a celebratory lunch. Where we went was to our favourite café, Cariocca in Brixton Market, where the food is spicy  and the welcome friendly. Besides, Mourinho who runs the place makes the world’s most delicious cakes. My dessert on Thursday was a piece of Banana and Salted Butterscotch cake, served slightly warm and with cream. It was so much the most delicious cake I’ve ever eaten that, even if you live in the north of Scotland, I’d recommend you come down to try it.

That’s all for this week. For me, it’s enough!

By the way, just so you’ll recognise it, my photo is of Cariocca’s window. (more…)

 Hey, what’s this?

      A swing – but not where the old one used to be.

What’s it say on that bit of paper that’s hanging on the end?

     ‘Swing on this at your leisure.’

Wonder who put it there?

     Don’t know.

(more…)

Question: What’s a story? The answer, I’m sure, will be familiar to you. Answer: It’s a letter from the past that we send on to the future.

This saying popped back into my head this week from the higgledy-piggledy storage box I’m obliged to call my mind. A family member was wanting to talk through our family tree. So I’d plunged into some actual storage boxes up in the loft where the contents are an absorbing horde of photos, postcards, notes and letters. (more…)

Now I’m in my 60s, I feel I can finally come out. I love books. That’s it. I love books. A long time ago, when the Storytelling Revival was gathering steam in the early 80s, it felt impossible to say such a thing if you wanted to be regarded as a storyteller. Everything had to be oral. And as an aspiring storyteller, you preferably had to be seen to come from a long tradition of ‘oral’ with a family culture of oral taletelling behind you.

I’ve always loved books. I love stories and storytelling too. But I also love books. Many of the stories I tell come from books. But of all the books I’ve read, only a minority were ones I deliberately picked up to look for storytelling material. During the last couple of weeks, however, a book I got sent to review for The School Librarian  unexpectedly turned out to be real storytelling stuff – a bit  like coming across a newly written Odyssey.

Brunt Boggart is the book in question. It’s the kind of book I’d like to read out loud to young people. Maybe I’d also like to read it to adults. The language is inventive but also direct. Its rhythms feel like those of spoken language. Names for things and people sound folkloric but freshly coined. What characters say is idiomatic and also spicy  like what you want in an oral story. Places and landscapes give the sense of being familiar, as if they’ve always been there and the underlying story is one whose theme is deep in all myth. It’s the search for the place where everything comes right.

Brunt Boggart – the story

Greychild is a boy who’s brought out of the forest when the boys-who-would-be-men of Brunt Boggart go into the forest to find and fight Wolf. Is he a wolf-boy? He’s certainly strange. Brought back into the village, he gets socialized. The girlen love him and plait flowers into his hair. But there’s something else inside Greychild. It’s a memory of his mother who, as he recalls, used to come into the forest to see and feed him until one day when she came no more. (more…)