The Dream House: a ghost story for Samhuin - by Steve Gladwin

Irish Times.com

Here is a story for the time of the ancestors. It goes something like this!  

 There's a couple in Ireland, and he's recently retired. He works hard and has had to work a lot of evenings. He's always promised his wife that when he retires, they will find their dream house - the one they've always promised themselves.  One morning, just after he's retired and before they've even had time to think about finding somewhere to live - the celebratory bottle of sherry still two-thirds of the way down and the retirement still gleaming and untarnished on the mantle-piece - the wife comes into breakfast excited. 

'I've had that dream again', she says. 

 Now then, this had been a bit of a joke between them when they were first married. The wife, Marie, had this regular dream when she was looking up the drive to this house where she just knew she was going to live, and where she would be happy ever after. It was, perhaps, a young wife's dream, but it felt real and comforting and got her through the first, difficult pregnancy. And yes, from there came that promise they made that one day they would find that place and live in it.

Well, you know how it is? Time passes and life and two children - now long ago grown up - take over. Before you know it there's talk of retirement and you feel as if you've only just sat down and it's upon you. More change. Maybe that's why the dreams returned!

But this time- Marie hastened to tell her husband Eamonn -it was different. This time she wasn't just standing, excited on the drive looking at a house she knew she belonged in. This time she was in the house, seeing all of it, and standing in the garden. She was looking at the heavy, stone bird-bath and thinking she'd need to replace the water. Or maybe she was white-washing the outside of the house, (the white-washed walls were one of the few things she remembered from before), or looking with pride at the gleaming surfaces in the old kitchen, or stacking wood into piles from the woodshed at the blind end of the garden. She also remembered what a distance it was from the shed back to the house, and how treacherous it could get with the ice. 

From the Independent.ie.

In her dreams, she mused on this about the house, and changed that about it, and when she came out and found it really had been a dream again, she felt refreshed. She always woke with a smile on her face. After a few months of having Eamonn around the house, Marie decided he needed something to do. He needed a new project, and so did she. Luckily, she knew just the thing. It began with a few calls and glances at the property sections of the local newspapers, but soon spread online as they both decided they would be happy with a new  change of scene. They decided they liked the idea of County Clare, where they'd had many happy times around The Burren, that unique limestone landscape. It was a place where they had often holidayed, and besides, if they found somewhere, there would be ample opportunity to strike out elsewhere. 

 To cut a long story short, they booked a week in a nice week in a B and B and set off with a new set of leather luggage, one small indulgence after years of making do,( but both Marie and Eamonn secretly hoped there might be a few more now there was the firm's handsome pension to live on). Almost a week had gone by and they had found nothing remotely suitable. All the properties were either too expensive or not available. There had been one half chance, but it had been snapped up even before they could submit an offer. What made it twice as difficult - Eamonn had to admit, was that Marie didn't seem that bothered about anywhere. She was looking - somewhat unrealistically - for her one particular   dream house. 

wikipedia

 It was the last morning and it was pouring down with rain. The mood in the car was of repressed anger and resentment. Both had snapped at the other. Eamonn had been fed up three days ago, (the constant unseasonal rain had hardly helped), and Marie was angry with him because he kept pushing her to settle for less. All considered, things were in danger of brewing into a storm within, as well as without.

'There!' 

 Eamonn jerked to a halt, rubbing his neck and glaring. Turning in anger, he saw Marie gazing in rapt delight at a house opposite. A small white-cottage at the top of a long drive. 

 'There' she said again, smiling her delight. 'That's my dream house, Eamonn. 'And sure now, hasn't it got a for sale sign.?'

 'Looks like it's been there a long time as well', he grumbled. 

 'Oh, don't be such a misery. Let's sneak a look. See, there's a porch we can shelter from the rain. Maybe we can look through the windows.'  

Eamonn softened at that, and really couldn't help but chuckle. That was his Marie,   ever the rebel, but she'd run out of causes years ago

Over the next few hours, things moved on at a speed they could never have dreamed of. Marie was so certain and Eamonn, thinking that the fishing was bound to be good and that there were worse places they might get stuck in the middle of, agreed more to both please his wife and prevent the torture of starting the whole thing again somewhere else. besides, his wife's total delight - as she ran through the garden with a soaked and grumbling Eamonn in tow- was eventually infectious - as long as it didn't last much longer. 

 'See, look. I told you. There's a wood shed just beyond the blind end of the garden.' 

'Just how would you know it's got a blind end, for crying out loud!' 

'See, here. The grass seems to run into a dead end. But look, there, behind those trees. There's nearly half as much. It's huge.'

Having fingers a darn sight greener than his wife's and plenty of time to get them even greener, this was one thing Eamonn could agree about. Three hours later, they were in the solicitor Mr Herbert's office, and he was putting the finishing to the purchase. He'd even managed to produce a celebration glass of a somewhat warm and sickly sherry

'Miss Bird needed a quick sale', Mr Herbert stressed, 'but she was also quite clear she wouldn't accept just anybody. 'The house needs the right person', she's always saying, 'as much as the person needs the house.

' 'Well, then, the house is clearly in luck', Eamonn smiled as he chinked his glass. 'The house has clearly been looking for my wife. She's been dreaming about such a place for months. It's the oddest thing.

' 'Not such a place, Eamonn', she scolded him. 'This is the place.'

 'Well, what, with the notoriously fussy Miss Bird   having agreed just like that when I described you, it's clear that you must be.' It was then that in the only odd moment during the somewhat rushed proceedings, Mr Herbert gave her the strangest look. 'Yes', he smiled. 'Very clear indeed.'

It took over three months to arrange the move and in the second of those months Mr Herbert phoned to inform them that the old lady, Miss Bird, had died peacefully in her sleep. 'But she was alert to the end, and only sorry she said, that she couldn't have lived to see you both into your new home.'

pininterest.com

It was bitter January when they moved and thus they didn't concentrate much on anything apart from getting the removal men to get all their stuff in and getting the fire going nicely and the boiler heating up. The weather being so foul and the move having taken them into the evening, they insisted the removal man and his two sons, a local firm, came in for a cup of tea and a brandy to keep out the cold. Besides, Donal and his sons were the first people they'd met from their new area. Just as they were leaving, the older man took Eamonn aside. 'I'm taking it old Herbert warned you about the ghost', he said to a stunned silence. 'He didn't?, Eamonn swallowed, hardly believing he'd heard the words.

'Ah, well, I can see now how maybe he wouldn't. I'm sure as sure you'll have a happy time here now.

It was March by the time the solicitor had time to take up their invitation to come to dinner. Not that they had found anything to complain about, apart from the ghost comment. Everything worked and the place was comfortable and - considering it was winter - they'd been very happy and cosy indeed.

Mr Herbert was unexpectedly delightful company. Clearly a born raconteur, he kept them amused with his tales of old bats far weirder than Mrs Bird and their inexplicable codicils! As they were finishing their desert, Eamonn decided it was time to breach the subject before the opportunity went. 'It's all lovely', he admitted,  pouring another brandy into his own glass after Mr Herbert had shaken his head. 'In fact, I can't see how it could be any better. But why not tell us about the ghost now?

Mr Herbert, much to their surprise, didn't act like a man who'd been caught out at all. Instead he gave a slow smile as he sipped at his coffee. 'Oh, he said. 'It's true that there is a ghost, but I never imagined it could give you any trouble.' 

'Why would that be, then?' Marie asked softly.

'Why', said the solicitor with a small twinkle. 'Because the ghost is you, Madam. You see, I've seen you here many times.' 

The End

In such a year of unforced change and unfamiliarity, I thought it would be nice to find a gentle and hopeful story for this time of quiet remembrance at Samhuin, rather than the usual ghosts and ghoulies. After all, as two other bloggers have already pointed out, this was a time set aside to revere the ancestors, rather than imagine they could scare the living bejaysus out of you!

The story of the 'Dream House', or 'The House in the Road', probably originates as a folk-tale, as much as an urban myth, for there are certainly several versions of this tale-type. This particular one, based on the version I have told many times as a storyteller, can be found in 'Folktales from Around the World', by Jane Yolen, part of the fabulous Pantheon series of World Folktales, and the first such book I bought and read.

However if you're feeling a bit cheated of your spooky story, might I recommend a few I read for this blog a year ago, as well as a novel I have read recently.

The novel is 'The Haunting of Hill House' by Shirley Jackson, which was made into an equally terrifying film called 'The Haunting'. It's not quite 250 pages long and in many ways it's a different kind of haunted house story, where what begins in the imagination works in tandem with the fact that this is a house with real attitude.

I would also recommend the following short stories. 'The Beckoning Fair One' by Oliver Onions (1863-1961) is another exercise in disturbed psychology and with the same claustrophobic feel as Hill House.  It has however an ending, which could well have been the opening of the latest case for 'Endeavour', or 'Vera.'

'The Ash Tree' is just one of many stories by the great M.R.James, (1832-1936)  I might recommend. Here it's the tree of the title which is the real problem, but it also broods beautifully all the way to it's climax. Warning - spider babies!

'The Haunted and the Haunters', by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, (1803-1973) is quite extraordinary, and for me the most chilling of all haunted house stories. Bulwer Lyttonhad the reputation of being a poor writer, but certainly not here, where he pulls out all the stops.

'The Room in the Tower' is one of many marvelous and terrifying short stories by E.F. Benson, (1867-1940)   known widely as the writer of  the 'Mapp and Lucia' series of novels. It's one of those books where a single refrain gets  under your skin and won't let go!

'The Great God Pan' by Welsh writer Arthur Machen is a quite extraordinary one-off. By no means a classic ghost story, it nonetheless carries with it the kind of truly unsettling feeling that few stories possess. Like Algernon Blackwood, (see below) and W.B. Yeats, Machen, was a member of the hermetic order of the Golden Dawn..

'The Doctor John Silence Stories', and hundreds of fine stories of terror and darkness, such as 'The Willows', 'The Wood of the Dead', and especially the elementally haunting and terrifying 'The Wendigo', bring us to writer, journalist and early broadcasting narrator and creator of 'Starlight Express', Algernon Blackwood, (1869-1961) An odd man, who despite lacking much knowledge of human relationships, traveled widely and so had a huge range of settings and myths at his beck and call. 'The Wendigo', perhaps even more so than 'The Willows', brings us into a terrifying claustrophobic and elemental world, where the normal rules are suspended and the great wood spirit of the native american people reigns supreme.

My most chilling story of all is not a haunted house story of any kind, and like the best stories, defies easy categorisation. One of many wonderful Irish ghost story writer Joseph Thomas Sheridan Le Fanu, (1814-1873) 'Schalken the Painter' is a story both terrifying in both concept and execution. Actually, creepy hardly does the extraordinary events justice. Read it, and if you're feeling really brave seek it out on youtube, where there is a memorably chilling and disturbing BBC adaptation from 1979, adapted by Leslie Megahey. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TZjrhDoGCM. You will also find a video version of the original story read by Ian McDiarmid. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzzWCujHDNY

Now, don't say I didn't warn you. Happy Samhuin

Steve Gladwin - Stories of Feeling and Being

Writer, Drama Practitioner, Storyteller and Blogger.

Creation and Story Enhancement/Screen writing.

Author of 'The Seven', 'Fragon Tales' and 'The Raven's Call'

01938 500728/01485007189/imagepoet7@gmail.com/mrwilliamsromance@gmail.com

https://www.storiesoffeelingandbeing.com/

Getting the First Draft Down - By Tamsin Cooke

 I don't know if any of you have ever done NaNoWriMo?

It's when you aim to write 50 000 words in one month, about 1600 words a day. It takes place in November and is a great way of keeping you inspired and on target. There's lots of support and it's free to join. In case you are interested, here's a link to their website. 

I did it a couple of years ago, and by the end of the month, I had a first draft of a story. Admittedly it needed an awful lot of work - but first drafts always do! Unfortunately the book didn't sell, but NaNo taught me that I am capable of knuckling down. 

And so I am planning to do it again this year. I have an idea and I'm ready to write. In fact I've been ready to write for a while but I have been procrastinating. My house is clean, the dog has never been walked so much, and I might be going for the Olympic record in bingewatching Netflix. Never have such few words been written in such a long time. 

I have written a beginning but I seem to be preoccupied in making sure it has a killer first few chapters. But I can work that out later. Instead of going over and over the same few pages, I need to get the first draft down to make sure the story actually works. Which is why I am doing NaNo. And once the words are down, then I can play with them.

It's great to know that most authors (possibly even all of them) hate their first drafts too.

"The first draft of anything is shit," by Ernest Hemingway

'For me, it's always been a process of trying to convince myself that what I'm doing in a first draft isn't important. One way you get through the wall is by convincing yourself that it does not matter. No one is ever going to see your first draft. Nobody cares about your first draft. And that's the thing that you may be agonzing over, but honestly, whatever you're doing can be fixed ... For now, just get the words out. Get the story down however you can get it down, then fix it," by Neil Gaiman

"I just give myself permission to suck. I delete about 90 percent of my first drafts ... so it doesn't really matter much on a particualr day I write beautiful and brilliant prose that will stick in the minds of my readers froever becasue there's a 90 percent chance I'm just gonna delete whatever I write anyway. I find this hugely liberating," by John Green

"The first draft is a skeleton... just bare bones. The rest of the story comes later with revising," by Judy Blume

So I am going to give myself permission to write an awful first draft. I will embrace the mess and plan on fixing it later!

Tamsin Cooke

Author of The Scarlet Files Series and Stunt Double Series

Website: tamsincooke.co.uk
Twitter: @TamsinCooke1 

Breaking the jam

I wonder if this rings a bell with others.

I can outline all I want, but sooner or later I always reach a spot in a WIP when I realise that I have no idea what’s going to happen next. I’ll have overlooked a plot point or a character trait that brings my story to a shuddering halt while I try to work out what to do next.

 

Since I don’t have the kind of imagination that works to order, it can often be some time before I get going again. But something strange has happened lately – for me, at least; others may do this all the time. While I was stuck in one story and not relishing the prospect of worrying about a solution, an idea for another story popped into my head. I scribbled a few ideas down, liked them and, deciding that if I couldn’t write Story A, I might as well write Story B, got started on that.

Things went swimmingly for about a week. Then Story B dried up; my outline had been very sketchy. In the meantime though, I’d had an idea for Story A, so I decided that I couldn’t write B, I might as well...

I’ve been doing this for a while now. Progress on both is slow, but there is progress. As I said earlier, others may do this all the time. My upbringing, though, has drilled the idea of finishing one job before starting another so thoroughly into my being that this... method of unlocking ideas has never taken root.

It’ll be interesting to see where it takes me.

 

Zooming into the (near) Future! A few tips for online school visits by Saviour Pirotta

Like many authors up and down the country, I rely on school visits and festivals for a good chunk of my income. Lockdown started almost at the end of my event bonanza surrounding National Book Week back in March. My last appearance was at the fabulous Pink Pig Farm in Brig. I spent a very happy and productive weekend with fellow authors and Mel and Nick, the wonderful owners of the Rabbit Hole bookshop.  We told stories, read from our work, signed books and tucked more than we should have into Pink Pig's state-ot-the-art cooked breakfasts.

    Fast forward a week and my inbox was flooded with emails cancelling bookings in the summer term. Luckily, I was about to sign a new four-book deal with independent publishers Maverick so I knew I could keep my head above water for an extended period of time. Schools were soon asking if I would do online sessions, though, and the agencies I work through started looking into the possibility of supplying them. I was hesitant at first. I hate the sound of my voice and don't really like how I look on screen or in photographs. In actual visits, I forget about these trivialities like this once I get into the pace of things but, on zoom or whatever, there is no way of escaping the vision of my gurning face. 

    As the summer wore on and it looked like actual school visits would not be happening till 2021, I forced myself to 'snap out of it' as Cher said in Moonlight. I've actually done quite a few visits, culminating in six sessions with a school in Shanghai last week and two events of the East Riding Festival of Words. I can't claim to be an expert on the subject, but here's a few tips I picked up which might prove useful to other members of the SAS.

1.   THERE'S MORE THAN ONE PLATFORM

In the media you read and hear mostly about zoom but there are alternatives. The education authorities in the East Riding of Yorkshire, for example, prefer to use Microsoft Teams. It's something to do with privacy issues. I've also done events on Google Hangout Meets and Skype. They're all more or less the same but do check with the schools what platform they are using so you'll have plenty of time install on your computer and get familiar with it.

2. TO RECORD OR NOT TO RECORD.

Some schools insist that you do not record the session and some ask if they can. I always refuse to let the session be recorded, partly because of privacy issues but mostly because I want the repeat business. I treat my sessions as actual in the flesh visits, except that I'm looking at the kids through the window of my mac. Recording the sessions destroys that unique 'in the moment' experience.

3. WILL YOU HOST?

Most of the schools organise and schedule the event themselves but a few asked that I set it up myself. If they go for the second options, it is very easy to set up. You just schedule a meeting and the platform gives you an event id which you send to the school. Come the hour and the moment, the school logs in and you just click on the accept the invite button. Easy peasy.

4 IS THAT THE TIME?

If you are doing an international event, make sure you check what time you need to log in. My Shanghai events were schedulted for 12.15 their time. Which meant I had to get up at the crack of dawn to be ready for 6.15am our time. Checking everything was set up at 5.30am I realised I might disturb my elderly neighbour whose bedroom shares a party wall with my office. I hastily decamped to the kitchen where I could howl, crack jokes and generally create a rumpus without waking up the neighbours.  

5 CHECK THE BACKGROUND

My hasty retreat to the kitchen necessitated a quick tidy up. Make sure you check the background before going live. This is the perfect opportunity to display artefacts relevant to your subject and show off your new books. I do this using the photobooth app on my laptop but obviously, you can use any camera that will show you what the audience is going to see.

6 IT TAKES TIME...

...as in, this is new territory for most of us so it will take a while to find out what works for you. I love doing writing workshops in actual visits but I couldn't get them to work online.  Ditto with storytelling. I need to be in the same room with the audience for the latter to work as I pick up on the kids's vibes to help steer my delivery. This is nigh on impossible if the kids are just a fuzzy image on a screen. I now read a couple of chapters from the book I'm promoting, talk about the background to the story and how and why I wrote it, and finish off with time for a Q&A.

7 SEEING IS BELIEVING

Larger festivals often host a prep session before the event. Most of the authors participating join in with these and they're a good way to find out how others approach their events. One or two organisers said the audience would not be visible during the entire session and that any questions would be put forward through the chat function on the app. I found not seeing the audience hard going but answering questions that appear in the chat box quite easy. Make sure that you discuss your preferences with the event organiser so that you can relax and concentrate on giving your best performance.

I hope I haven't been teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, as the saying goes. Good luck with your online sessions. Although I just can't wait to start visiting schools again, I plan to keep online sessions to reach places I can't access otherwise. It's a brave new world out there. Let's meet it with confidence.

Saviour's latest Early Reader, Samira's Wish, is out now with WackyBee books. His third instalment in the Wolfsong Series, The Mysterious Island will be published on the 21st January 2021.  Follow Saviour on twitter @spirotta and on Instagram @saviour2858.

    

Going Away on Retreat at Home by Claire Fayers

 It started when my friend told me she was owed a week's holiday from work and asked if I wanted to join her on a socially distanced, online writing retreat.

Her idea of a writing retreat being my normal working week, I saw no reason to refuse. In fact, if we were having a retreat, why not include our SCBWI (Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators) critique group? In fact, why not include all the Welsh SCBWI group? In fact, since we're not constrained by geography, why not invite the whole world?

We started with the most important things, of course. A logo and a hashtag.

We decided the retreat should have two purposes. First, a week of inspiration and mutual support for our regular crit group members. Second, a chance for everyone to join us in some fun challenges and writing sprints.

For the crit group, we set up a WhatApp group and scheduled a pair of zoom meetings. The group quickly grew to 15 members, some of us wanting to write intensively for the week, others hoping to drop in now and then and shout encouragement to the rest of us.

The twitter hashtag was to be our athletics stadium, with writing sprints running from Monday to Friday. Each day had a new challenge. (Wednesday was everyone's favourite.)

Monday

The plan was that I'd set the challenges and my friend would run the twitter sprints. Problem: something is wrong with her twitter account and her tweets don't show under the hashtag. (Note to self, next time check these things in advance). I take over the sprints. The WhatsApp group is busy, everyone is happy, the world is bright and full of inspiration.

Tuesday

Up early, raring to go with the sprints. I google a random word generator and set random words as inspiration for the sprints. The evening sees the first of our zoom meetings and it is fantastic to see people I haven't spoken to properly in months along with a new SCBWI member I've never met before.

Wednesday

Feeling the strain a little. I use photos as inspiration for the twitter sprints. I'm editing, not writing, and the sprints feel too short. I cheat, scheduling two hours' worth of tweets so I don't have to keep stopping (Note to self - scheduling makes the job so much easier. I'll be doing this a lot more in future.)

Thursday

Crash. An early morning doctor's appointment turns into 40 minutes sitting in the waiting room, wondering why these things always take so long. Late starting the sprints. Using what3words.com for random word inspiration and it's taking far too long. I want to go back to bed but I have the second zoom meeting this evening.

I enter the meeting. 'How's it going?' a friend asks. 

'Terrible,' I say. 'I'm exhausted, I'm stressed, my book makes no sense. I don't know why I ever started writing the thing.'

He thinks for a moment then says, 'In other words, you're almost at the end.'

I realise he's right and give silent thanks for friends who understand.

Friday

I have my inspiration back. I forget about being clever with writing sprint inspiration and spend the morning revising my latest chapters. A walk around the park in the afternoon clears my head (Note to self - next time you do a retreat, schedule in some exercise time.)

Saturday-Sunday

Many of the group are writing across the weekend so I join in for a few hours and get some useful extra words done. Tired, but happy.

The Verdict

We had 15 people in the WhatsApp group, but many more took part via twitter during the week. Seven people sent me their wordcounts, and we had a total of around 30,000 words between us, but I know much more was written.

Comments from the group were overwhelmingly positive:

"I didn’t get to join in as much as I hoped but I do feel more energised and have made a good start on the chapter breakdown. It’s been lovely hearing everyone’s progress."

"Adding my thanks to the thanks bouquet! I’ve only done 1200 words, but have got back into my story after a break, which is great. It has been really motivational and positive reading the posts and I’ve loved the prompts."

"I did about 1000 - which is 1000 more than I would’ve done without all the encouragement and support."

The best comment of all, however came from our SCBWI network organiser, who said:

"Not to take away from anyone’s achievement the word is only part of it. Like most people here have already said it has brought us together, made us look again at our WIP’s and been so wonderfully encouraging all week. Fantastic, well done everyone, those who have taken part and those who have cheered them on, it has be quite a privilege to be with you all."

This summed up the week wonderfully. Sitting in our separate homes, working on our vastly different WIPs, we felt closer together as a group. Even Terrible Thursday was made better.

Would I do it again? I'm already thinking about something for next year. In the meantime, if anyone else wants to organise an online retreat, count me in.

Writers in their Landscape. Hugh Lupton by Steve Gladwin

Part Two


The second part of my interview with storyteller, writer, poet and lyricist Hugh Lupton, carries on the theme of landscape in more detail and relates it particularly to the landscapes of Mid -Wales and Norfolk, and Hugh’s books on John Clare and The Mabinogion. For those of you who particularly enjoyed the selection from Hugh's picture archive last time, I promise you a few more crackers, beginning with the one below.! And if you did miss the first part, you can find it here by backtracking through the archive, or simply typing in my name. Meantime I hope you enjoy this second chat as much as I did.

Hugh, Olivia Ross, Rob Harbron, John Dipper and Chris Wood in front. 'Christmas Champions' 2006.

Thanks again, Hugh. Let’s begin by thinking about those two very separate landscapes, of Norfolk, where you live, and North Wales and the Lleyn Peninsula, where for the last twenty five years, you and fellow storyteller Eric Maddern, and year after year of eager students – which four times included me – have been exploring landscape and myth at the entirely wonderful Ty Newydd Writers Centre. They are very different landscapes. How do you feel about them both?

I’m half Saxon and half Celt. When I think about the two dragons that Merlin reveals to King Vortigern on Dinas Emrys, the red dragon of the Celts and the white dragon of the Saxons, I think of the mix in the blood that runs in my veins: the red corpuscles and the white. The two landscapes, East Anglia and Wales, reflect that mix… they are both homelands, I feel comfortable in both.

East Anglia is farmland, largely arable, fertile, traditionally bound by the agricultural cycles of ploughing, harvesting etc. North Wales is mountainous, rugged, a herding culture, traditionally bound by cycles of grazing on high and low pasture. Of course those distinctions don’t mean much today when very few people are engaged in farming… but they inform the consciousness of place on some deep level.

Hugh and Eric attempt to lift the Gronw stone on an early Ty Newydd storytelling retreat in the 1990's.

The courses that Eric and I run at Ty Newydd, because of their location and its surrounding landscape, inevitably lean towards the Celtic end of the storytelling repertoire. Though some years we’ve drawn on a more agrarian mythology – The ‘Passion of the Corn’ explored Neolithic myth, ‘Frost and Fire’ explored the cyclic seasonal rituals… and we’ve run several courses where we’ve delved into the Saxon/Norse pantheon. 

Looking at the brochure every year I’m always amazed at how you manage to keep things fresh and rarely repeat. How have you done that?



Eric and I have been running these courses for more than twenty-five years. Eric came to storytelling and landscape through his work as a community artist with Aboriginal peoples in the Australian outback. He settled in the UK with the question: ‘What is the white-man’s dreaming?’ as his central concern. I (as I mentioned in the last interview) had become deeply interested in the connections between story and place, and ‘restorying’ the landscape. Eric and I had known each other since Ben Haggarty’s first storytelling festival. I’d visited his wonderful (evolving) place at Cae Mabon a number of times. We’d worked together for English Heritage. We were friends and there was something inevitable about us combining our interests and skills in running these courses at Ty Newydd.

The first course we ran was on the Mabinogion. Ty Newydd is surrounded by places that are mentioned in the second and fourth branches. The course was a mixture of discussion, excursions into landscape and retellings of the stories (which all participants contributed to). We saw ourselves as facilitators rather than teachers, and we found that there was a very high level of shared knowledge about the material within the group. This became a pattern over the years. Each course rang the changes, taking a different theme and connecting it to the landscape. Sometimes we led participants on quite challenging adventures. Among the courses have been: ‘The Battle of the Trees’, ‘Totemic Animals’, ‘The Holy Grail’, ‘The Sword out of the Stone’ (the coming of metal), ‘Bardic Romantics’, ‘Pilgrimage’, ‘Lost Gods of Britain’, ‘Song-lines’, ‘Culhwch and Olwen’, ‘Annwn and the Otherworld’, ‘The Goddess’, ‘Heightened and Prophetic Speech’… There’s no shortage of themes! This year would have been ‘Creation Myths’ but Covid scuppered that plan.

We’ve had wonderful participants over the years, many of them storytellers, some just beginning their journeys into the craft. Many came over a number of years, among them Nick Hennessey, Katy Cawkwell, David Ambrose, Ana Adnam, Sharon Jacksties, Jem Dick, Cath Little, Eleanor Kapp, Jo Blake, Jamie Crawford, Daniel Cohen, June Peters (to name a few)… and you Steve… and the redoubtable and much missed Rob Soldat (always a fount of arcane knowledge).

Each course has a visiting speaker for one evening. We’ve been privileged to welcome (among others) Ronald Hutton (many times), Kevin Crossley-Holland, Gillian Clarke, Hugh Brody, Nikolai Tolstoy, Lindsay Clarke.

I should also say that Ty Newydd has been generous and accommodating in making it possible to run courses that are far from the quiet and sedentary norm for a writer’s centre. It’s a beautiful and comfortable place to work in and from, with a fantastic team who have been enormously supportive over the years.

Again, the courses are very much about walking into landscape and telling stories within. How important is it for a storyteller to have landscape as a backdrop? Does it give you a particular something?



The general title for all these courses has been ‘Storytelling and the Mythological Landscape’. At least one day in the week is spent visiting sites that Eric and I have chosen as being connected with or evocative of the stories we’re exploring. It’s absolutely central to the course that all participants have this experience, so that when we retell the stories at the end of the week we have a shared imaginative world.

The landscape experiences can vary enormously. When we were looking at Parsifal and the Holy Grail we started at Trawsfynydd Nuclear Power Station (decommissioned) as an experience of the ‘Wasteland’ and then we followed an ancient trackway over the high moors to Harlech (as Grail Castle). When we were looking at the mythology of metal we visited the Bronze Age copper mines on the Great Orme… and smelted iron from stones we’d found on the beach. Then, with the Mabinogion-related courses, it’s possible to visit sites that are mentioned in the texts – Dina Dinlleu, Cynfael River, the Dylan Stone, Taliesin’s grave etc. I’m endebted to Eric’s deep knowledge of the North Wales sites for making these experiences possible.

So yes, to answer your question, it gives something fundamental to the retelling of the stories… more than a backdrop, something immersive.


*For a similar amount of time yourself and colleague Daniel Morden have been running a similar, weekend introductory course to storytelling there. Do you find with those that people need a lot of nudging to believe in themselves, considering they’ve made the decision to come there?

Hugh with Daniel in mid-story in the Iliad.

The fact that people have elected to come and have coughed up the fee means that there’s a genuine interest in what we’re offering. People come to those beginners courses with a wide variety of expectations and needs. Because Ty Newydd is a ‘Writers Centre’ Daniel and I often have to start by shaking off any notion that we’re going to be writing stories and reading them aloud. People are not always familiar with traditional storytelling or with the form and structure of traditional tales. The idea of improvisation can be terrifying. We spend the first part of the weekend with games and exercises that help people relax into speech and start to feel comfortable with each other. We end with a shared telling - participants work in pairs and tell folk tales to the rest of the group. We’ve had some wonderful tellings over the years, there’s something about the moment someone finds his or her voice for the first time that can be very moving.

It seems a natural progression from a retreat centre in Wales to the mythic world of The Mabinogion, and especially the four linked tales which are known as the four branches. Considering your love of the tales and the various explorations on all those courses, it took until 2018 for you to produce your book, ‘The Assembly of the Severed Head’. Was it something you’d always had brewing and you were just waiting for the right opportunity? How did the setting down of this story end up coming about?

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It had been brewing for a long time, but I’d never planned to write it down. I’d wanted to do an extended performance of the Four Branches, focussing on Pryderi as the central character. I’d thought I might record it. Also Eric and I had been talking (are still talking) about making a book about the courses we’ve run, and obviously the Four Branches and their geography would be part of that.

But then Henry Layte, who runs Propolis Books, turned up on the doorstep one day and said he’d like to commission a retelling of the Mabinogion. Well, as you know Steve, commissions don’t grow on trees, so I immediately said ‘yes’ and started thinking how it might work.

I knew I wanted to write something that liberated the story from the text and returned it to its oral, bardic origins. I’d always found the text strangely lifeless, though the material is extraordinary. Then, one morning, I had the idea: ‘What if there were two texts, a spoken and a written? What if the scribe is reluctant, disapproving and lacking the breadth of vision of the teller?’ I started reading about the history of early thirteenth century Wales (when scholars reckon the stories were first set on the page). It was the time of King John’s brutal incursions into Gwynedd and the humiliation of Llywelyn. It seemed highly likely that Llywelyn would have used his bards to fire up the Welsh troops with patriotic fervour in their resistance to the Normans. I thought: ‘What if there was a massacre of the bards? What if only one survived? What if he was the sole repository of the old knowledge? What if he knew that the only way his ‘matter’ could survive was through the written word?’ Slowly the frame story began to form in my imagination.

And, of course, it was the monks who were the book-makers and who, in their scriptoriums, set words onto the page. I knew that the scribe had to be a monk… and that he would have been writing, against his better judgement, this profane material from the old times. This tension between ancient lore and Christian teaching began to underpin the story and give it a tension… especially as the stories of the Mabinogi, told over a number of months in a Cistercian monastery, began to echo the ritual and liturgy of the church.

So (I hope) the book works on two levels. For someone who doesn’t know the Four Branches it serves as a lively and palatable introduction to one of the corner-stones of a British ‘Dreaming’. For someone who’s familiar with the original text it explores the moment a living oral telling is hardened and diminished into the written word.

At the same time it’s a celebration of the making of a book (a major operation in thirteenth century Wales) and of the fact that without that book the stories would have been lost completely. So hats off to Brother Iago and his stylus and quill!

 As a storyteller with such a love of the country, Hugh, it seems natural for you to have written a book about John Clare, the ultimate country poet. Is he someone you’ve had a lifetime’s admiration for? Are there any other poets whose work you particularly love? In general, how important a part of your journey has poetry been?

Many years ago I had a conversation with a First Nation storyteller called Jo Bruchac. He’s an Abnaki (a branch of the Mohawk people). He said that when his people were put into reservations it was as though they were ‘taken out of their mind’. In that culture landscape and consciousness are so intertwined that to be taken out of your place is to be taken out of your mind. As he was talking I started thinking about the English Enclosures of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The common lands, heaths and wastes were privatised and fenced, and the ‘landless poor’ who had always depended on them as part of a subsistence economy (grazing for their hogs, snaring & trapping, firewood, timber, berries, basket-making etc) could no longer make ends meet and were forced to leave their villages and move to the new mill and mining towns and become part of the ‘proletariat’ of the burgeoning Industrial Revolution. They were ‘taken out of their minds’.

John Clare lived through that moment of history. He was attuned to his place (the village of Helpston, near Peterborough), its animals, birds, plants, rituals, songs, agricultural cycles, in a way that echoes a First Nation sensibility. For him the enclosure of his parish and its losses marked a fall from a personal Eden. And he was taken out of his mind (he spent the last twenty five years of his life in a lunatic asylum).

I’d always loved his poetry. He wrote these finely observed ecstatic snap-shots of the world of his place in a language that by-passed the mannered poetry of his time. He was a labourer. He was literate but had grown up in an oral culture, he composed as he was walking or working and wrote when he could afford to buy paper. His story seemed an important one to tell today, seven generations on, when the full implications of that ‘enclosure moment’ are playing themselves out in the environmental crisis we’re all facing, and at a time when more than half the population of the world has been forced to move from village to city. The novel is set in 1810, the year of the Enclosure of Helpston, when Clare was seventeen and just beginning to find his poetic voice.

In answer to your second question… yes, poetry has always been central for me. I’ve always written poetry and in some ways it’s been my core concern. In fact myth and (true) poetry are sprung from the same source. What Coleridge called Imagination. Here’s a list of key figures (off the top of my head): Mother Goose, Chaucer, John Skelton, Shakespeare, John Donne, Wordsworth & Coleridge (pre 1810), Blake, John Clare, Edward Lear, Edward Thomas, D. H. Lawence, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, Robert Graves, Yeats, Dylan Thomas, Kathleen Raine, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, R.S. Thomas, Charles Causley, George Mackay Brown, Alice Oswald… and most of all the ever fertile anon’.

I should add that song is so closely allied to poetry that it should be acknowledged in the same breath… so here’s to Bob Dylan, Robin Williamson, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits, Lal Waterson, Lou Reed, Paul Simon, Gillian Welch… and once again (and an even more resounding cheer) the anon’ of the ballads and folk songs.

Was it a big challenge to write about someone whose work you so admired? As you know, I’ve recently been doing similar with the composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. In doing so, I’ve often had the fear of misrepresenting him as a person or character. Did you feel that with John Clare? After all he’s never really been as highly regarded as he might have been until recently.

During John Clare’s life there was a passing fashion for ‘peasant poets’. For a little while he was feted in literary London. Three volumes of his poems were published (cleaned up & tidied for mass consumption) then he was dropped and forgotten. His best work was written after his fall from grace… it would be more than a hundred years before much of it was published. He was rediscovered in the twentieth century and is now regarded as the founding father of ‘eco-poetry’ (I hope that isn’t another passing fashion).

Not very much is known about his early life, so I had a certain amount of leeway… and anyway I never pretended that the novel was anything other than a ‘fiction’. But at the same time I felt a duty to be true to my sense of John Clare, who he was and what drove him, and to stay within the few parameters of what biography there is. His early love for Mary Joyce is attested in many of his poems, but nothing is known of what actually happened between them. My story is pure conjecture, but I hope it makes it possible for the reader to then go to the poetry and understand how the loss of the commons and the loss of Mary somehow get entangled in his imagination… she becomes his muse and the presiding spirit of his place.

I couldn’t let you go without talking to you about Greek Myth and your performing partnership with Daniel Morden. I was certainly thrilled when we saw you do ‘Metamorphoses’, and I think there might be something about the great Greek stories – something powerful, but also visceral – which gives them real impact when out across to an audience. And, apart from anything else, these are some of the greatest stories ever written. What would be the main pitfalls in telling them?

You’re right, these are magnificent, visceral stories. There’s a challenge in telling them though, they’ve become sort of main-stream. There are so many layers that have to be scraped back to get at their energy. There’s an academic overlay, a psycho-analytic overlay, there are Victorian, Enlightenment, Renaissance and Roman layers that have to be scratched at to get to the essential stuff. Various poets have shown the way. Christopher Logue’s ‘War Music’ and Ted Hughes’ ‘Tales from Ovid’ re-charged the material. Daniel and I have done performances of the Odyssey and the Iliad with professors of Classics in the audience, their response is often: ‘I’ve been studying this material all my life but I’ve never experienced it as a story before, I’ve never been moved by it before.’ That was our aim, to get to the humanity that’s at the root of the Homeric tales.

We started with the Odyssey. Our angle on it was that this is a story about a veteran’s return from war. Odysseus’ journey home with all its mythic encounters charts the stripping away of his warrior bravado, so that when he finally reaches Ithaca he has become ‘nobody’, and only then is he ready to be re-united with Penelope. The more we told it the more we realised it only made sense if it was preceded by the Iliad, so that an audience came to the Odyssey having witnessed the bloody excesses of the Trojan War. But then, when we started telling the Iliad, it became clear that it also is imbued with a deep humanity and understanding. Homer never takes sides. War is never a simple case of right and wrong… and most of it is outside human agency altogether, it has its own terrible momentum.

Homer is a master! He/she’s up there with Shakespeare & Tolstoy. And the wonderful thing is that Homer is really anon’, he’s standing at the end of five hundred years worth of oral transmission, he’s just the moment it reaches the page.

To tell those stories is to engage with the Greek Gods and Goddesses. Daniel and I found the whole Olympian Pantheon, each with his or her powers, provinces and ‘force-fields’… each of them flawed, but with the power to level a city on a whim… we found them deeply absorbing… and with a certain reality… we found ourselves being careful how we addressed and acknowledged them. So the next stage in our Greek adventure was to tell the stories of its divinities, and that was how ‘Metamorphoses’ came about. Then we moved on to Prometheus, Theseus, Jason… we’re currently working on a set of Greek myths about the constellations.

To answer your question though, the main pitfall is to lose the emotional journey the stories chart. An audience needs to care about the characters, its heart need to be touched. The outward harshness of the Greek stories can make this difficult to achieve.

It appears from an outsider’s viewpoint that you’ve spent a great deal of times collaborating and working with others on every level. You’re clearly a very social person. Do you prefer a mix of both, or is it project to project?

I like collaborating, it’s a form of play.

I remember when I was a boy, I’d go round to someone’s house and nothing much would happen. I’d watch his electric train set go round and round and then we’d sit in front of the telly. Then the next day I’d go round to someone else’s house and something clicked, before I knew it we were clambering around in a tree and imagining we were part of a tribe of monkeys. It was those people who became friends. The people who I’ve collaborated with (there aren’t that many of them) are people who can play. Ben & Pomme, Daniel, Eric, Nick Hennessey, Chris Wood… when I set off in the car with Eric to explore possible sites for a Ty Newydd course… when Chris and I are matching words and music… when I’m locked in conversation with Daniel… these are all clambering around in a tree moments. It’s all about the excitement of that dynamic… when you’re making something that’s bigger than both of you.

I also like collaborating with musicians (and its not called playing an instrument for nothing). It’s a delicate thing putting music and story together and I’ve had wonderful collaborations with Helen Chadwick, Rick Wilson, Sherry Robinson, John Dipper, Rob Harbron, Sam Sweeney...(Chris Wood is a musician too, of course, but he’s also a word-smith, and in his own okkard way, a bit of a visionary).

The other thing about collaborating is that it’s much more fun when you go on tour. Solo tours can be miserable affairs, solitary meals, long drives, drab b&bs… but shared tours lift the whole experience… the post-gig pints… the late night Indian… the shared sound-track in the car etc. Chris and I used to tour with a copy of the Good Pub Guide and take long detours to fit in a rattling good lunch.

Hugh on the right in the top hat in the Bergh Apton Mystery Play in 2012. And yes - you're eyes are not deceiving you! That is the bishop of Norwich as God!

So yes… I like collaboration… but I also like working on my own… I like dreaming a book or a performance into being… I like walking and muttering to myself… I like balancing on that tight-rope between being in control and being a conduit for something that’s speaking through me. In many ways I’m a bit of a solitary.

Another form of collaboration I’ve been involved with recently has been ‘community plays’. There’s a village in Norfolk called Bergh Apton with a very strong interest in community arts. I’ve worked with them on four plays. I wrote a cycle of ‘Mystery Plays’, which were performed over a day as a processional performance with a cast of maybe fifty people. We’ve made a performance on the rituals of winter called ‘A Midwinter Dreaming’ and one on inundation and global warming called ‘A Songline for Doggerland’. The plays are all written in negotiation with the community and involve workshops (writing, mask making, printmaking, lantern making etc) with a host of local artists. We’re currently working on ‘One for the Rook’, a performance about the geology, flora and fauna of the parish. I’ve been lucky to work with some very skilled local community artists: Davis Farmer, Charlotte Arculus and Mary Lovett.

And I should also mention in passing, although it’s worth a whole interview in its own right, my long friendship, collaboration with and apprenticeship with the late Duncan Williamson, the Scottish traveller, teller, singer, and extraordinary bearer of oral tradition.

   

My final question takes us back to storytelling. You and I share a fascination for a series of tales called ‘Tales of the Lincolnshire Carrs’. I know that you did a cassette version which included two or three of these tales years ago. Now, even, allowing for some of the stranger products of those many nations who tell what we call ‘traditional tales’, they really are fantastically dark and also quite disturbing. For me, Lincolnshire born as I am, admittedly, they rather stick out like a sore thumb in their themes and atmosphere, and the fact that they’re written nearly all in dialect. The very particular landscape of the Fens really did produce and evoke a nightmare world, didn’t it?

I didn’t know you’re a Lincolnshire lad Steve!

I think you’re talking about the stories retold by Mrs Balfour. Yes, I included some of them in my ‘Tales of the Fens’ performance: ‘Tiddy Mun’, ‘The Dead Moon’ and ‘The Green Mist’. She was a niece of Robert Louis Stevenson and had literary aspirations. The stories are very strange in a feverish sort of way. They include strong folk motifs but seem to me to have been ‘worked up’ either by her or by her informant. There was a big tradition of taking laudanum in the Fens (sovereign against Marsh Fever) and the ‘Tales of the Lincolnshire Carrs’ have a tinge of the opium-induced nightmare about them. They are amazing stories though. And yes, the flat, water-logged landscape of the Fens does seem to have generated some dark narratives.

Well, thanks again, Hugh, it’s been a pleasure to catch up and share some thoughts.


Many thanks Steve… it’s been a pleasure, and great to be interviewed by someone who has such a long perspective on my various doings over the years.

And it only seems far after you've put all that splendid work in, to guide people to your excellent website, where they can see - and buy - lots of goodies.

http://hughlupton.co.uk/

Next month I will be chatting again to Kevin Crossley Holland, about the ways he sees and writes about landscape, especially in his poetry.

-- 

.Steve Gladwin - Stories of Feeling and Being

Writer, Drama Practitioner, Storyteller and Blogger.

Creation and Story Enhancement.

Author of 'The Seven', 'Fragon Tales' and 'The Raven's Call'

01938 500728/01485007189/imagepoet7@gmail.com/mrwilliamsromance@gmail.com

https://www.storiesoffeelingandbeing.com/

 

Samhain and the Space between the Worlds - Holly Race

When I was ten (a very, very long time ago), my parents took me for a ride on Midsummer's Eve. My pony, an ageing but sprightly, speckled creature called Cobweb, was my best friend and one of my favourite pastimes was making up adventures for us to go on.

On this Midsummer's Eve, my parents told me that the fairies had heard of how wonderful Cobweb was, and left a present for us. I just had to canter up this hill and keep a close eye on the ground. Far from the main road, canopied by oaks and birches, Barrington Hill was a magical place for me anyway, but never more so than at that moment. That evening, as Cobweb and I cantered up the path, I dutifully kept my eyes peeled for signs of fairies.

Was that gold dust on the ground, or just the sunlight playing through the leaves?

What's that up ahead, on the side of the path? A tree trunk... but what's on it?

I slowed Cobweb to a halt and stared at the trunk. On it, amidst flurries of gold dust, was a tiny, golden horseshoe. A fairy horseshoe.

I can see now that it's plastic, but at the time it felt like fairy gold!

The horseshoe lives in a book of memories about Cobweb, but the item itself isn't what's important. I still vividly remember the heat of the evening sun on my back, and the way it sent its shimmer through the trees so that I felt as though I was riding through haze. It was a Midsummer feeling - that feeling that true magic is not far away, if only we could lift the veil between the worlds.

In a few days time, Samhain will be upon us. Pronounced Sauw-en, it's an old Pagan festival marking the start of Winter, and traditionally it is one of the times when the barriers between our world and the 'otherworld' are at their thinnest. Over the centuries Samhain has been amalgamated into All Hallow's Eve, and then into Halloween. Our calendars are peppered with the ancient ruins of pagan festivities. Some, like Samhain, have been commercialised. Some have been picked apart and used to create new celebrations, like Ostara - now Easter. Some remain only as a feeling - a change of mood as the nights close in or grow longer - like Beltane, which marks the beginning of Summer.

In my book, Midnight's Twins, the knights' calendars are still governed by these old dates. Samhain has particular meaning for me now because it is the day when new knights - and my main characters - are called to the otherworld, Annwn. Samhain is the start of my story, and Beltane marks the end of the book.

But really, we all tell stories at these times of year, don't we, in our different ways? Maybe we go out looking for pumpkins, or read ghost stories under the covers. In Iceland, 'jolabokaflod' is the simply excellent tradition of gifting books on Christmas Eve, then reading them through the night. One of Shakespeare's most loved plays is set at Midsummer, when the fairies come to the woods outside Athens to wreak havoc with mortals.

Maybe we're still trying to make sense of the changing of the seasons, in the same way that the Greeks told the myth of Demeter, Persephone and Hades to explain the oncoming of Winter and the dying of the crops. We may on an intellectual level understand that the rotation of the earth relative to the sun is what causes the seasons. On a primal level, though, we still fall back on old stories and superstitions as the smell in the air changes and our moods shift.

Cobweb inspired so many of my stories, both as a child and an adult.

Or perhaps we truly are sensing the fragility of the fabric between the worlds, and the stories at these times of year are summoning ghosts from beyond the veil. For me, I'll keep chasing those fairy horses.

Slag heaps and hope - Sue Purkiss

I always listen to the Today programme in the morning (though these days it's beginning to feel like an exercise in masochism), but there are some bits I tend to tune out of - such as Thought for the Day. But the speaker on Tuesday - Nick Baines, the Anglican Bishop of Leeds - caught my attention. Perhaps it was his quiet, relaxed tone of voice with its slight northern accent - or perhaps it was because he started off talking about things I could relate to: his childhood memories of two significant events. The first was the assassination of J F Kennedy, and the second was the Aberfan disaster, which happened on the 21st October 1966 when a mountain of slag, destabilised by heavy rain, slid inexorably downwards to smother the school in the village of Aberfan, killing 166 children and 28 adults. I remember that too - the horror of it, as we watched the news and saw the pictures of what had happened. 

He went on to speak of Yorkshire, where he lives, and where the slag heaps of his youth, the detritus of the mining industry, have now vanished, to be replaced by fields and - doubtless - houses. His point was that things can change and ugliness can be vanquished, and that it's important to remind ourselves of this.

I too was brought up in a mining town - Ilkeston, in the Notts/Derby coalfield. The local pit had closed recently, I think before I was born, but the workings and the slag heaps  - the tips - were still there. The mine that I remember was at the back of Shipley Wood beside a reservoir; we would see the winding gear when we walked in the woods to gather bluebells or play in the shallow hollows, which were perhaps the remnants of earlier mining. 

I couldn't find a picture of the tip I remember, but this is Ilkeston. The tip was somewhere over to the left of the viaduct.

But it was a huge tip at a different pit which I remember best. It was visible from Cotmanhay, where I was born: you could see it from the school, or when we walked down to my dad's allotment beside the canal. To me, it was an ugly thing, dark, dead, grim. 

At the moment, there isn't a tip dominating the physical landscape. But there are a lot of dark threats louring over the metaphorical landscape. The virus, and other things too. But it's the virus that's really impacting on children's lives at the moment. Yesterday I was talking to a friend who has children in secondary school. She was saying how the whole family is hoping that a planned weekend in Cornwall can go ahead: they desperately need something to look forward to, she said. At school, it's just lesson after lesson: everything is hedged around with restrictions, there's nothing to look forward to. Christmas and New Year, at least in their usual form, look like being cancelled: winter looks like a long, dark tunnel. And I fear, perhaps even more, for the impact on younger children, in a world where you have to be careful of hugs, where changes, imposed from above, disrupt the normal patterns of young lives - seeing grandparents, going to the park, having holidays.

To me, as a child, the rather grim landscape around the estate where I lived was what it was. I couldn't imagine how it had been before the pits and the council estates had arrived: I couldn't imagine it being any different. But it is different, it has changed. The tip has gone. What was dead and black is green and living. Today's children are living in a different world; perhaps, unlike the child that I was in the shadow of the tip, they already have the confidence, the conviction, that change can happen - that they can make it happen. (They have some terrific role models - Greta Thunberg, for example. I don't remember figures like that when I was a child - though there were figures in books who could make things happen, make things change: Heidi, Katy in What Katy Did, Jo in Little Women, Anne at Green Gables.)

As I was musing about all this, it stuck me that there is a role here - as there always is - for writers of children's books. Because what you - we - do is offer up a multidude of visions of how life can be - and how our heroes  - children - can surmount obstacles and effect change. 

We offer hope. 

Children's books can be funny, exciting, silly, thought-provoking, informative, kindly, imagination-stretching. They create images of how things can be different - that slag heaps, viruses, crazy world leaders and other blots on the landscape need not last for ever. Terrible things happen - but there is always hope: and children hold the future in their hands.

Remembering the children of Aberfan, whose future was stolen from them..