Storytelling

 It's wonderful to be here talking to you.

     Thank you for dropping by. Glad you could make it. Quite honestly, I never thought I was going to make it this far myself. There always seemed to be so many things in the way: romance, marriage, work, studying as a mature student with two young children to bring up, professional exams and then the real killers - self-doubt and lack of discipline.

     Storytelling has been an important part of my life since I was a young child. The town where I grew up didn't have any schooling for expatriate children beyond the age of eight. So at eight years old I was packed off to boarding school 330 miles away up country in Nairobi, Kenya. It was tough at first. I didn't know how to make a bed nor how to tie up my mosquito net. I could bath myself but I didn't know how to wash my hair. I was as homesick as only a child of eight can be. I missed my parents and my younger sister and brother. I missed the dogs and the cats. It was strange being away from home for three months at a time.

     What cheered us all up in the dormitory at night after lights out, that lonely time when children away from home miss a goodnight hug and a kiss, was the storytelling. One of us would start to weave the magic with a first chapter. Then she would pass the wand on and round the dorm the story would go, building and bewitching, taking us all to the enchanted world of the imagination.

     My parents were great readers and so there were books aplenty in our house. There wasn't much to do in the evenings in those days; no television, little local radio. It gets dark every evening between six thirty and seven in the tropics so near to the equator. The main entertainment was the BBC World Service radio, reading or stories.

     At supper time my father would tell us stories. Sometimes he made them up. Other times he adapted grown-up scary tales for us, like "The Monkey's Paw" and "The Day of the Triffids".  His original stories are lost to us as he was not a writer but a storyteller. Had he lived in this electronic age the world would be a richer place for children.

     My first story, "Fertile Turtle", went on sale on Amazon yesterday. It is the first of a series, "Our Man in Mazita", which is set in an imaginary landscape round about the turn of the fifties. The stories are funny but ironical rather than comic. I hope you will enjoy them.

     Come along and join me on this journey. I would love to have some company through whatever failures or successes lie ahead.