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The Storyteller of Bath (and Bristol)

So, the first week of March and I travelled down to Bath to stay with my friend Harry. Next day, Wednesday, I worked in a school in Bristol, running Poetry workshops for KS2 children. Wonderful fun. I used a structure-based approach similar to the work I do with StoryMaking, and the staff were amazed at how the right level of limitation liberated the children’s imagination. After my first class there was a break and, as she entered the staff room, my class’s teacher smiled broadly at a colleague.

“If only all learning could be like that!” she said.

And I sincerely believe that more of it can. The children created complex poems in which an everyday object tells their own story. Some poems were riddles and you had to guess what the object was, and some were metaphorically very rich. Everyone wrote something and now the staff will take these beginnings on further. Proper job satisfaction for me.

On Thursday, Harry and I did our best to destroy the best that Bath had to offer in the matter of ales and pies (very good at The Griffin). I saw a moving play at Bristol Old Vic called Pink Mist. Actually, it was very storytellery as all the characters narrated the story straight to the audience. There was no set and minimal props and actors created scenes with movement and posture. I’ve got so much to learn there. I happened to be seated amongst a clump of 6th Formers, A Level drama students. Kid next to me was all scorn at the end of first act, so above it all, telling everyone how he’d worked out the impending twist in Act 2. He had and he hadn’t. As Act 2 progressed, I noticed him stop fidgeting, start leaning forward listening intently. At the end he spun to his friends;

“Excellent!!!” he said.

He’d dropped into the story. So much better than being above it.

On Friday I worked in a different Bristol school and, at day’s end, boarded a train not to home, but to Manchester. Word Of Mouth Storytelling Club was celebrating its 21st Birthday. I cut my teeth there 17 years ago. I wasn’t going to miss their birthday for the world…

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Trains, Planes and back to Blighty

On Friday 12th, we travelled from Chandigarh to Delhi. We’d flown from Delhi to Chandigarh, but now we took the train back. We’d seen nothing of the Indian countryside from the plane due to fog, until we landed in Punjab, green and growing, everywhere. We arrived in modern Chandigarh.

Chandigarh, incidentally, is very modern and very beautiful. Because we’d seen nothing of the city, our British Council hosts, Bipin and Christina, told our driver to take us the long way to the station, only ensuring we arrived in time for our train. Chandigarh is so open, so spacious and so incredibly rich in public parks and nature reserves that we felt like we were in a city and not in a city simultaneously. I’m very glad we got to glimpse it.

Then we got to the station and waited for our train. The trains that pulled in were huge! You could feel the weight of them, the heft of them. Truly, these were trans-subcontinental trains. We boarded ours, and shared our carriage with families, business-people, students, more. As we pulled out, darkness fell, and so we didn’t get to see anything of the Indian countryside by train either! But what an enjoyable journey. We were in standard class. In standard class, two young men, who seemed to tend our carriage only, served us first with vegetarian sandwiches and salad. Next came a rich dhal and with it a paneer marsala, chapatis and rice. Next came fantastic samosas, soft, spicy potato-filled, with peas, chickpeas and almonds and peanuts added for texture. Then came tea, and I finished with a wonderful Indian sweetie but Gluten free and milk free Sooz had to be sweet-free too. Because I know how empathic she is, I enjoyed mine as ostentatiously as possible, rolling my eyes, humming and gasping with pleasure, so that she could at least share the experience with me. Aren’t I kind?

Now contrast all this with catering on an English train – microwaved ham ‘n cheese baguette, completed with painted on griddle marks, which you have to pay for on top of your ticket fare. We’ve got a lot to learn from India.

Chandigarh Station

 

We smelt Delhi long before we got there, a thick smell of coal smoke, the street cooking of the poor. I lived in Yorkshire for seven years; I find the smell of coal comforting. I know it’s hell for the environment, but for me, emotionally, that smell means cosiness. And then we were back in the madness, the buzz of Delhi and, once we’d found our car, were stuck in a traffic jam before we’d even left the station carpark.

Next morning, horribly early, we left. In 22 hours, door to door, we would be home. What, I wondered, would home feel like?