A new stop and tell performance for festivals, schools, parties and celebrations. Audience members are encouraged to hand over some gold and then guided into creating their own stories by the booth master! Many thanks to the very talented Ron Plant who made a beautiful booth, check it out on the website though the photo really doesn't do it justice. So if you want something a little different at a party or celebration look no further! Guaranteed fun for any age!

Will it remind me of a walk eight months ago? Of a moment, of a second, of a fragment of time? Will my mind show me faces I have known? Faces I have loved?

One step, follows two steps, follows three steps, follow four...... And how my legs ache to walk. To stretch over this vast countryside. To explore. To find.

Not away from something....but towards a destination.

Already I see the green of the fields. Already I smell and feel the rain on my face.....already I feel the warmth of the spring sunshine kissing my pale skin and allowing me to breathe...... already I hear the open rivers as they tussle towards the sea. Already I sense the strangers' faces passing.....stories etched within their brows.....Each one a mass of words from within, waiting to tumble into the world.

And will I see fairies or ghosts from the past? Will I see castles and rainbows and princesses in towers? Will I meet knights in armour or bakers of bread?

And will I hear the grass growing under my tread? The wind singing her joy through the trees. The plants and the flowers whispering my name?

Will I feel the cold snow under my feet?  Will my toes be kissed upon warm earth? Will paths be lost and seconds gained? Will I see moonlight, slicing the clouds with her pureness of white? Will I see roses blushing for the sun? Bluebells dancing with joy? Cherry trees dressing in flowers of delicate pink?

Will I see swans and geese sweeping overhead, deer and rabbits running for home? Will new lambs born be leaping and jumping around......as fat bumblebees, blown by winds, blaze forward?

Who knows but the walk?

Tomorrow I start walking. Tomorrow is a good day.........

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My mum and dad brought me a really lovely and thoughtful present for Christmas this year; it is a blown up picture of me giving a puppet show performance to all of the children in our street. Possibly one of my first performances ever. I am trying to hide myself behind a red plastic train, my shock of white blonde hair sticking above it and obviously being very much in view.

The children are all sitting in a line, some on the floor, and others on go-carts and tricycles. The performance is a sell out, with other children standing outside the little fence.  I’m not sure why they could not get in, I was possibly charging two sweets as an entrance fee and I grew up in a rather impoverished area..... But the audience look happy, they are smiling and whatever I am performing is winning them over.

I wish I remembered that moment; what I was performing? What characters I might have used? Did I take a bow at the end? Did the audience give me a standing ovation or cry out for more?  But I think this picture shows that I was the Jack Wild or Lena Zavaroni of Duck lane, (the street on which I lived). The only thing I lacked was a clap-o-meter for those who remember Opportunity Knocks.

Where did I get this need to perform? It is a question I often ask myself. It has always been with me. The need to put on a mask and become something or somebody else even for a moment. Performing is almost like a drug to me; the adrenaline that courses through my body makes me feel alive and I really could not imagine ever living without it.

Miss Fennimore, who I spoke of in a previous blog, encouraged this in me at primary school, she allowed me to go to a summer drama camp and sorted out the fees; I could have only been eight or nine years old. Here I was immersed with other child actors and performers who all seemed to have the need to don masks and become something or someone else.

I remember one girl there, slightly older than myself, Kim, she was beautiful and American: she had a tight blonde perm, (as was the fashion in the seventies), and she shared cold hot dog sausages with me at the lunch break; She wore spangled tops, purple leg warmers and little pink shoes and I fell in love.

That hazy, crazy week of transcontinental mask wearing was during the decade of the strikes, where the electricity ran out almost nightly and we were confined to candle lit dinners, where the rubbish was piled in the streets and rats the size of cats could be seen daily; images on the news were of striking workers chanting while holding placards and screaming insults to anyone who carried on working.

The workshop leaders on that drama course were quite contemporary with their activities and one I remember was how they got half of us to pretend to be striking workers at the Pickled Onion Monster Munch factory.

It was a role play that I fell into instantly; I was no longer Andy Hawkins: remedial in maths and English, I was now a real person, with a wife (who happened to be an American Picket standing alongside me), and two point four children at home, Pickled Onion Monster Munch were keeping this family alive...... The performer in me was unleashed.....

I stood next to my beautiful, sausage sharing American friend, and remember the sheer joy of screaming loudly together “Save our Monster Munch” and “Death to the Monster Munch haters” and such like.... Our faces red with angst and passion, her tight blonde curls wobbling slightly with each toss of her beautiful head.....

The other half of the group were given the roles as police officers who after a short time came to break up the disruption: of course being children we acted and did as we had seen on television.... I screamed abuse at them and began to hit one with my imaginary placard, so much was I into my role: and then everybody did the same and the role-play ended up in a massive brawl....The children who were Police Officers became mini Jack Regans and George Carters from the Sweeny....Kim got a bloodied nose........and I swung wildly at the police officer who had done it...... Thus, for the first and last time in my life I was arrested by eight police officers who ripped my arm behind my back until my face crunched with pain and my nose was pushed savagely onto the shiny black drama room floor, with a, “You’re nicked son”!!!!

They would not have got me if it were not for the fact I had dropped my nonexistent placard to tend to my crying American wife..... I wept at the thought of prison and being separated from my shiny, spangly new love.

From that early time I understood the power and pleasure of performing, be it a drama, a story or simply a role-play, and, over subsequent years have relished in its glory: parts in school plays brought more and more want and I was soon joining the ranks of the amateur operatic societies in the local area: This Jack Wild of Duck Lane played the Artful Dodger in Oliver, Mike TV in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, (drawing my accent from my blond headed beauty of past), and Curly McLain in Oklahoma..........This one was rather difficult, due to my dyslexia while others were singing.... O...K...L...A...H...O...M...A.......at the end of the song Oklahoma, I was singing....O...L...O...A...M...K...H...A which was slightly problematic and led to several frowns from those elders who felt I was too young to be playing a lead part.

I later took the acting world by storm, playing an extra in Hearts and Bones, The Bill, Eastenders, Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps and several adverts, including Tesco’s and the Coca Cola one where the man rides down the street on a lawn mower, naked from the waist up. Remember it? Remember me?.........Hmmmmmmm, didn’t think so..........But am sure they will be blogged about eventually!

I was lucky enough to go along to Birmingham yesterday and see the wonderful Taffy Thomas handing over the Storytelling Laureate to Katrice Horsley. What was lovely, other than the four fabulous stories we were treated to, was seeing all the other storytellers there and a large audience celebrating this ancient art form.

The audience was mainly made up of adults; and when I arrived they had almost run out of seats so I sat on the floor by a mother and her two children.

When I am at these storytelling events I take as much interest in the audience as I do in watching the performer. Stories are great, because your eyes don’t always have to be upon the teller, and you never lose the plot if you shut them or look around.

The two children I sat next to immediately engaged with Taffy who told first, the oldest child having a beaming smile throughout his stories and then through Katrice’s who told afterwards; but, and this is the magic of a great story, and of course great storytellers, when I looked at the adults in the room all of them had wide grins and faraway looks in their eyes. Stories are able to bring out the inner child in us all.

Hence the humble story is still parent and children’s best friend at bedtime..... After all, you can’t fall asleep to a game on the PS3 or Nintendo DX can you?

On taking over as Storytelling Laureate Katrice spoke of the power of stories and how they are able to help change people deeply from within. They are able to look at different parts of their lives in a positive way and to grow from these experiences.

When I first came to live in the West Midlands I was working with young people who had been excluded from secondary school; this was a full time job and one I really enjoyed.

Most of the young people had been excluded because of behaviour problems and large schools not having the luxury of time to work individually with young people. The charity I worked for had private teachers who taught subjects in small classes and my role was to teach young people life skills, cooking, money management etc and to raise funds to educate these young people in different ways. This included a lottery grant to build a garden at the base where children could grow things and money to take them on trips.

One of the trips we took them on was to Wales camping. Some of the young people had never seen the sea before even though they were thirteen and fourteen years old: I remember one of the girls on our first trip away looking at the sea and asking “Where’s the deep end?”

The trips, which lasted six days and five nights, always started in a similar way; the young people would be quite frantic and even quite angry that they would not be able to play any computer games. (We would also take away their mobile phones and any other electronic gadget device). Some of the young people were used to sitting in bed playing “Call of Duty” or some other title until 2 or 3am, so leaving it was hard but once they had got over the fact that we had no electric and we were living in the wild something would change.

We spent the days walking the mountains, beaches, streams and valleys, then they would be responsible for building and lighting the fire; chopping the wood and cooking the food. Long evenings were spent with conversation. Mostly at first from the other workers and myself but then gradually by about day three the kids would begin to tell their own stories. Some sad, some happy but mostly very true.

Gradually around these fires people would change; not just the tellers but the listeners too. They looked at other peoples life experiences and compared them to their own. They saw each other as human beings and understood the power of voice and of communication and story.

I don’t imagine for an instant that they went home and threw their PS3’s and such like away, but I know they went home having told their peers a little more of their lives and by doing so their voices were heard and appreciated, and as Katrice told a packed audience yesterday in Birmingham, in telling those stories they were able to look at themselves in a positive role, that of a person, that of a communicator that of a storyteller.

Taffy holds several accolades; one being the first ever storytelling Laureate for the past two years. The other having his services to storytelling recognised by Her Majesty the Queen in the shape of an MBE.

He is a wonderful down to earth man and tells his stories beautifully, he makes stories which are often interwoven with meaning dance and trip off his tongue.  The beauty of this is that he makes it look simple which is the precision of his work and the art of a true genius. I have seen him hold audiences spellbound on many occasions by his gentle and beautiful way with words.

He is also a fine and generous human being, when I was first embarking on my own storytelling journey I went along to his wonderful storytelling garden in Grasmere to watch one of his Sunday lunchtime summer shows; I had said to him I would love to become a storyteller and while knowing only one or two stories was there to watch an expert at work. Halfway through his set Taffy stopped;

“Now” said he, “I would like to introduce you to a very fine teller of tales, put your hands together for Creaky Knee”......

And so it was that day I first told a story in front of one of my heroes and an audience in a true storytelling garden! Taffy has continued to only call me Creaky Knee, which always makes me smile.

Since then I have been lucky enough to tell stories at Taffy’s gardens a few times and to get to know Taffy and his lovely wife Chrissy quite well. Taffy travels thousands of miles every year but always has the energy to have conversations with his many, many fans. I have met people who bring their children to one of my shows that talk about their first experience of storytelling, sitting as children themselves at Taffy’s knee.

He wasn’t always a storyteller. Part of his remarkable story is what prompted me to write this blog today. Taffy used to be a fire eater many years ago, and some say he was also brilliant at that.

At the very young age of thirty five Taffy had a massive stroke which left him incapacitated. He used storytelling as a way of getting himself better; he had lost the use of his left hand side and, as with many stroke victims, was unable to use his voice properly. Gradually, through storytelling he started to get that back and today he is one of, if not, THE, most famous storyteller in the world.

I know that Taffy does a great deal of work with people who have suffered strokes, and I wish that I had known him when I was a small child. Which is why he came up in my thoughts today; I took a long walk up to Shropshire’s Stiper stones, again I was thinking about my life and my own personal story and journey.  I got to thinking about my Grandmother.  I don’t really remember a great deal about her. She was my mother’s mother, the only conscious memory I have of her is when I was playing with the ants as a child in her garden, and she poured boiling water all over them to my horror!

She had a massive stroke when I was about seven or eight years old; my parents had moved away from Harrow where she lived so we drove the hour and a half journey there every fortnight to visit her in hospital.

That hospital was always a scary place for me as a small child. I remember it now very well. The smell of the bed linen; the disinfectant and the buzzing florescent lights. My Nan was incapacitated. She was unable to speak, feed herself or even move without aid. Her bed was right opposite the door in a big long ward full of ladies. When we arrived we had to walk through the entire ward. The ladies in there were all older. I remember trying not to look either side as I walked up to my Nan’s bed, keeping my eyes fixed firmly in front, concentrating on my grandmother and her bed alone. One of the ladies in the next bed had lost her legs. This terrified me for some reason. I remember the old woman offering me a sweet every time I visited. I never took one. Now, knowing better, I wish I had, I don’t think I even gave that poor lady a smile.

But in those days when I was so young even my Nan scared me. The fact that she couldn’t talk and could not move. The fact that she was in this starched place that often smelt of death and decay. The nurses I remember were lovely; a big black woman called Gladwin would bring me a cup of orange squash, then they would feed my Nan milky tea in a pink plastic beaker. I remember my Nan trying to talk to my Mum and Dad; but I was never able to understand the words. They were slurred, almost drunk. I remember her eyes, so full of nothing. Every hour on those visits two nurses would turn my Nan in her bed, and I remember watching her and thinking how like a baby she had become.

The biggest memory I have of this time is rather a sad one, and one I wish I did not own. It was the last visit before my Nan sadly passed away (I say sadly, in many respects it was a relief). At the end of each visit a bell would sound, indicating that the time was over.

I was always held up to my Nan to kiss her cheek. This time, her head tilted towards me; our eyes locked. Her grey staring eyes still stay with me now. Full of nothing, yet full of love. I remember watching as a single tear drop fell down her cheek and onto the starched white linen. As I kissed that cheek the saltiness of her tear tingled upon my lips, the salt teardrop was almost given as a gift. This was the last memory I had of a woman I never really knew.

In the car on the way home my mother would always cry, my dad would comfort her. Their muffled voices would be soaked up by the cars revving engine.  I would sit next to my young sister and watch the orange glow of street lights as they lit up my eight year old world. I did not really understand what was wrong with her; I was just happy to be out of that hospital; away from the smells and the old ladies searching eyes and heading towards home.

I remember the Tuesday morning; when my Mum got a call from the hospital to say that my Nan had gone. It was winter and very cold. I remember eating Ready Break while my mother sobbed into the telephone.

I would give anything for that time back. I would give anything to sit with the old lady who had lost her legs, to take her my own bag of sweets, to give her a single smile. To listen to her story.  I would give anything to be able to kiss my Nan and tell her I wasn’t afraid of her and that I understood her pain even though she could not speak. But sadly one is unable to change time.

I want to end this blog by congratulating Taffy Thomas; for all that he has done in the storytelling world. For being the first Laureate and for being honoured with that MBE. I want to congratulate him for being an amazing man and a wonderful ambassador for storytelling.

But bigger than that, I want to congratulate him for the work he has continued to do with so many people like my Nan; I am sure over the years he has been an inspiration to many people who have found themselves in a similar position and as a storyteller and a man I am proud to know him. I would also like to wish Katrice Horsley a wonderful storytelling adventure as the new Laureate. How exciting. Happy days.

I left school when I was fifteen years old because teachers had given up hope of me getting any qualifications. They allowed me back to sit CSE drama which I got a grade one for. In my mind I was always going to be an actor so qualifications didn’t matter.

School then allowed me to do extended work experience at the factory my dad worked for. He pulled some strings. I was pleased at the time, but then the monotony set in. Twelve hour shifts catching one bit of paper with glue on it and laying it on another bit of paper which fell from large clunking and hissing machines like large square snowflakes.

I remember the men getting their pay packets. Brown envelopes: as well as a weekly wage inside the company gave them thirty pence for the tea machine; two pence for a cup of liquid that would make even hardened alcoholics livers shiver: but we drunk lots of this brown stuff, it stopped the boredom of the paper catching.

As a young lad I was generally the tea boy, but also the butt of many older men’s jokes.  They sent me for rubber hammers; glass nails, left handed screw drivers and the like. I once spent four hours in the storeroom waiting for Bob to get me a long weight to fix a machine........it was a very long wait indeed!

All the time at this factory I waited for a producer or a director of a film to come around and spot me.  I knew they would come, I just wasn’t sure when. My £22.30 a week went up to £54.80 when I came of age and tea prices had risen and then I was expected to settle in for the long haul of life and overtime, but by god I was bored.

A few weeks before my sixteenth birthday I brought a train ticket to Devon; walked out of work and began my life.

I was going to Pontins Holiday Camp, where I just knew a producer or a director would spot me: Goodbyes were tearful, I remember my mother at the sink crying; her hands emerged in soapy water: “Why have you got to go to Devon?” She sobbed. “Why can’t you just be normal?”

As the train left the station I looked out of the window, I passed the factory where my dad was working and where I had been just a few days previously; a few minutes later I passed the road in which I had lived all my life;  I smiled and for the first time I felt free.

Pontins was brilliant. When I woke in the morning and opened my curtains I had an ocean outside; I lived with lots of other young people; we drank, laughed and generally had a wonderful time. I made many friends some of whom I’m still in contact with now. Soon they were offering me a prestigious blue coat; but because as a general worker I had formed an alliance with the common workers, chalet maids, cooks and cleaners, we believed all blue coats to be a little above themselves; so I refused it. Rightly or wrongly it felt good to do.

Of course this was a summer job, so winters were hard; I stayed in Devon with friends and slept on their floor, I lived on Jacket Potatoes without butter for a whole month. We had signed on, as you could do then, but Thatcher’s Britain was slow with red tape hold ups for income support.  It was then that my friends Dave and Mark decided one of us had to earn some money; the only way of doing this was to go on the fishing boats leaving Brixham every day. So we pulled straws. I will never forget the feeling of fear as I pulled the short one.

The next day I was at the docks at 4am. In those days it was simple to get a job on the boats; stand at the dock and ask everyone who arrived if they needed a hand. Very soon I’d got my job. We would leave the following day; a mini trawler expedition which would sail and fish for the best part of three weeks going nearly as far as Spain.

The boat left the following day; eight men onboard including myself. I say men, they were monsters, huge, burley animals that put my skinny seven stone frame in a shadow. They did not speak words; or words I understood, they merely grunted , spat, smoked, snorted snuff and drunk scrumpy from tin flasks.

If you know Brixham Harbour you will know the mini lighthouse and the wall; well the boat began to sail, and I thought:

“Wow, this is lovely, calm and peaceful......What do people complain about?"......The harbour waters were like a mirror.

It was then we passed the harbour wall!

The sea was horrendous; the waves crashed the boat in the air and brought it down like a fairground ride. Within six minutes my colour had gone from that of a healthy pink young man to a mottled green ill looking creature. The sea sickness started at around eight minutes.

Some people say that sea sickness lasts a while, and once you get your sea legs you’ll be fine. This is a LIE; well it is in my case. I was sick after eight minutes and I did not stop being sick until we arrived home nearly three weeks later.

I had a simple job as it was my first sailing. For those who have never been on a mini trawling boat it is quite an easy operation. The nets are cast out from something like a giant catapult or cannon on the back of the boat; they fly through the air and are weighted and tied so they drop into the ocean like an open bag, they are then pulled along a little way and are gathered back up by the hauler, hopefully full of fish.

Of course the nets need to be secured to the boat at the time of launching them into the air. By long heavy thick rope.  That was my job; first to tie one side of the net on to the boat, then to walk around and tie the other. Easy...........Simple in fact. I had been shown how and when to do it by a spotty man with black teeth while in the comfort of the harbour and had mastered it in minutes; he had grunted satisfaction, spat a huge ball of his chewing tobacco near my foot and walked away......I was a fisherman now......Simple!

Simple, that is, if at the time of the first throw out (as the Skipper called it), you were not hanging over the side of the boat, yellow in face and being very, very sick.

The nets were thrown; they hung in the air like the screeching gulls around the boat; they continued through on their journey.  I watched. A new sickness now rising in me. The world had become slow motion; on and on they went, on and on and on and on;  then, still as slow, they fell towards the green choppy sea; the ropes that I had been due to tie dangled teasingly like a grandmothers apron strings, and then, like that net had never been there, it vanished, into the sea. Not even a ripple marking its spot.

The Skipper stood to my left. His jaw dropping almost on the salt stained deck of his boat, his eyes blazing:

“You little F****r!!!!!!”......... His words resounded in a thick Devonshire accent........ I still hear them now.

“You F*****G little F****r!!!!!........... I’ll F****G kill you!!!!!!! Come here you little bloody, f*****g b*****d!!!!!!!!!!”

He was not happy. Nor were any of the other seven gorillas who proclaimed themselves as men. I remember standing there; in real fear of my life. They had just cast out a net worth at least a thousand pounds without any fish in it; full of fish worth two or three thousand at least.

I stood rooted at first.....Then after it had sunk in I did the only thing I could do......... I ran! It seemed to be the only good thing to do. Only the boat wasn’t really that big. So to be honest running wasn’t a great option either. The Skipper followed me; with more expletives than a boy could throw a live or dead fish at: I managed to get into the small bathroom and pull the lock on the flimsy wooden door.

It was then, for the first time on that boat, I began to cry! I do believe that crying saved me from being dragged out and either thrown overboard or strangled with the skipper’s braces.

I cried for England; big choking sobs, with the fuming Skipper just outside the door. The only pause in my sobbing was when I stopped to be sick.

Eventually I let myself out. No one spoke to me in conversation again; on a boat somewhere floating in a massive sea I was sent to Coventry.  I was given a new job which did not involve tying the spare net to anything. In fact, I think this was a made up role, a punishment, I had to help the  hauler pull in the net after the throw out. This involved me kneeling under the hauler while it brought the net aboard. As each yard of net was pulled over so were the fish. Each fish greeted me with a slap on the head. Sometimes when I glanced upwards I was met in the face with a cold skinned fish of some description. Conger eels, cod, whiting and sole and some of the largest crabs I have ever seen. At the end of my four hour shifts my hair glittered and glimmered in the sunshine with fish scales; I must have looked like some transsexual mermaid without a tail.

I was left to eat on my own and had no human company. (Mind I didn’t have much of that from the beginning, these men were really not human!)

One day the foulest storm of the trip hit the boat; I sat outside drinking tea in a set of yellow cagoules trying to put something into my belly which would soon come up again.

I looked out to where the horizon should have been; and that had been replaced by a wall of sea; the boat lurched upwards the height of a mountain it seemed; then again back down; and then a wave hit the boat directly and washed completely over me; I looked down into my tea cup; and saw  simply salt sea water. For the second time on the trip I began to cry!

I have never ever been so relieved to be back on dry land as I was when we arrived home. The smell of fish stayed with me for weeks. Of course I wasn’t paid. The other animals took their wages (up to £1,200, which in 1986 was brilliant) and went promptly to the public houses and drunk and fought each other until the next voyage. These men were hard men, and though they scared me to death then I have nothing but the upmost respect for people going to sea to catch my dinner! Fishermen in the UK have had a very hard time over the last twenty years, government quotas have fallen and made fishing very difficult and does not protect our waters being fished by foreign vessels which are often much larger.

When I arrived to where I was staying I was hoping for some welcome; friends able to talk to me: but it turns out the dole cheques had arrived in my absence.  Dave and Mark had cashed both their own and mine and were that evening swanking it up in a nightclub in Torquay.

I went to the cupboard, took out a potato and stuck it in the oven. Pleased to be safe and sound and still very much alive................

But of course, in the whole scheme of things, everybody’s existence, work and life makes a difference. I spent the morning with my friend Paddy; he is a builder and has lived around Shropshire all of his life. We spoke of the houses that he has helped build. I asked him to take me for a drive and show me his work. We passed buildings both grand and small; he remembered them all; from the first he’d worked on as a fifteen year old lad to the one he is currently building now. His voice echoed pride as he talked and this made me smile inside and out. His life is etched out in the towns and his legacy will live long after he is gone.

Inside those houses that he has built live families, those families have dreams and ambitions and each single one of them no doubt makes a difference both to each other and the world in which they live.

When I got home I started to remember my journey; the journey of my life;  I had a teacher when I was ten years old, called Miss Fennimore; she wasn’t a class teacher, rather a teacher for children that were not getting on; they used to call us remedial, thankfully a name which no longer exists,  I was rubbish at school.  I have severe dyslexia, (ironic for someone who loves writing and words),  this was not picked up on at primary or secondary school. The only thing I excelled in was drama and Miss Fennimore spotted this, saw a spark. She encouraged me to audition for parts in school plays and made a special deal with a holiday scheme to take me on for a reduced fee. I excelled and finally found something which I could do well and this allowed me to grow in confidence and stature, and through this one thing I could, eventually, albeit rather later in life than some,  go to university and succeed.

Thirty years later I saw Miss Fennimore in the street of my home town. I approached her and thanked her for that belief, thanked her for giving me the chance and the confidence to do something special and thus changing my life, standing there in the cold November rain she was so moved she began to cry.

Storytelling has changed my life; and my journey to become a storyteller was one filled with people who believed in my talent and the way I can do things. I won’t name them all here, but people like Taffy Thomas, Peter Chand, Mike Rust and Allan Walters and friends like Steve and George who simply enjoy listening to my tales and poems have done nothing but encourage me and give me good advice. Peter gave me terrific breaks, allowing me to perform at Festival at the Edge and showing me the way forward in business and marketing, thus again allowing me to grow in confidence. The Storytelling world is full of these types of people who are more than happy to share their good advice and practice to help you; this is unlike my experiences with the world of acting where it seems the practice is all about getting work whoever you have to climb over.

In November I did a small performance for one of my favourite storytellers and another very generous person, Shonaleigh; it was called  The Beacons project in Sheffield. The beginning of this started with a procession; Shonaleigh, followed by men with blazing fire torches followed closely by a long, long line of children and their parents and grandparents. It was a true community project and people were laughing and smiling together, celebrating their own and each other’s existence and difference.  As they passed me I remember seeing the sparkle in their eyes, the magic of fire and stories combined and it is an image that will stay with me forever. I am lucky to be doing Shonaleigh’s course in November and am really excited about how it may change me as a person as well as a storyteller.

Last Saturday I got a phone call from a parent. I had worked with her daughter in primary school where I wrote and directed a primary school production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Her daughter was appearing in a play at her new secondary school and really wanted me to go. Of course I went and last night the young lady was a fantastic success. After the show she rushed up to me, full of the excitement of an opening night performance. “What did you think?” “Was I good?” I told her she was brilliant and I was a very proud man! It was to my delight to see five different students who I have worked with in the production.

After the show the girl’s mother thanked me for my “belief” in the car park on a cold January evening, I knew exactly how Miss Fennimore had felt, and I too was so moved tears began to sting my eyes.

The reason for this blog today is simple;  if you have children or work with young people or even know the neighbours kids; enthuse them with what they do well: be it acting, building making or simply playing. It is sometimes easy in this constantly critical world to pick and pull up on negative points; but it is the positives we gain the most from, the positives which allow us to grow as individuals and allow us to go out into the world to make our own differences. We as people, as parents, as friends can help that process roll just by picking and choosing the right things we say and do.

This week I have started two very special projects in two primary schools; Donnington Primary and Blackheath, both in the West Midlands. They are after school projects for the whole family to come to.

What makes these projects special is seeing the joy the children have while sharing simple stories and ideas with their parents. Part of the work was to get the adults to tell the children a true story about themselves which the children did not know, then for those children to share it with the group. Both groups are very large, so it is no small feat for the children to stand up and tell the stories relayed to them: but with mum or dad or grandparent there beside them the storytellers were given the strength of confidence through trust. By telling that story to them, the older person was in fact saying “I trust you with this, to tell others” and by repeating it; the young person was able to see their own adult in a different context. That of a person. Which sometimes children forget. Mum and dad are often considered supreme beings; faultless because of age and experience. But through this activity they were able to give the gift of words to the listener, and also able to learn a shared history, these mini stories in turn made the listeners smile or think about their own life as a landscape for a story.

Stories shared were often of mistakes made; one of the dads in the group had managed to get himself locked into a car, the fire service had to remove the windows to free him; one of the ladies, who had endured four births really wanted to experience the joy of seeing another mother give birth; in  her words she wanted to see “someone else in pain for once”, when she managed to do this, and saw a baby being born she promptly fainted; giving the nurses in the delivery room more work to do.

This work made me start thinking of stories that my own parents had shared with me; I was born on 7^th February 1969; that week there had been severe blizzards over the UK and the highest level of snow fall recorded in history. My mum had been taken to hospital a few days before my birth and my dad was to make his own way there when the time came. I was a Friday child, who, if you know the poem, is full of love and giving, and when my dad set out, in his beaten old car I certainly gave!

The hospital was eighteen miles away and after four miles or so the car broke down; my dad had to walk the last fourteen miles to the hospital, in his rush he had forgotten his coat and wore just a thin shirt, at times the snow was up to his knees. When he arrived at the hospital he did not get a chance to see me, he was suffering from hypothermia and was given blankets, warm drinks and treatment himself. Later that day he was led into the room where my mother cradled me in her arms; he looked at his son, his first born child, the son he had walked through the bitter snows for, nearly perishing in the cold, the son he had made with love, the son he could fill with dreams and with stories and inspiration; and his first words on seeing all of this:

“HASN’T HE GOT A BIG
HEAD”.

Stories are our wonder; true and fictional we are able to visit places and things simply by going into the quietness of our mind and imaginations. People used to do this as a matter of course “Once upon a time” Before televisions and computers we were forced to use words and stories daily to communicate. We would tell stories to warn, to give insight, to entertain but mostly to engage each other. While the world at times nowadays seems slightly less personal we are still able to do this. By taking a moment; sharing our joys, loves and fears. By allowing others a tiny window of light into our very creative mind.

So if you have read this blog, and you are in the position to do so, tell someone a story about yourself. If you have no one around you to tell, go somewhere quiet and remember a story for yourself. Enjoy the words that make you special, enjoy the memories that make you.

Monday's child is fair of face

Tuesday's child is full of grace,

Wednesday's child is full of woe,

Thursday's child has far to go,

Friday's child is loving and giving,

Saturday's child works hard for a living,

But the child who is born on the Sabbath Day

Is bonny and blithe and good and gay.