A Country Local

Last night my friend Ruth and I visited my 'local' where there was going to be "STORYTELLING - Local writers, authors & storytellers will enthrall you with a selection of short stories. Come along and listen, and bring your own story if you have one!" Who could resist this invitation, right on my doorstep (well, 2 miles away, but then the nearest M&S is 25 miles away, so that's practically next door)? I'd never been in the pub so it was a good excuse to try it out. We arrived in the fading light to find a horse and open carriage just returning from taking people on a jaunt around the lanes, with the usual array of smokers sitting on benches outside. Inside we found two packed rooms but no bar. How to get a drink, we asked a ruddy-faced man propped on a wobbly 3-legged stool, and he pointed at a door marked Taproom and told us to knock - "Don't ring!". Sure enough someone came out, took our order, and disappeared inside again. We grinned at each other. This was quaint. We inched our way with our beers through the crowded room to an emptier one where well-dressed people of all ages, maybe 12 in total, sat around a large scrubbed pine table shuffling papers in front of them and talking earnestly to each other. Had we missed the storytelling? No, no, they reassured us, we're just taking a break. We'll be off again in a minute.

The White Horse, Sweffling

Now Ruth and I are prone to become helpless with laughter by just looking at each other, and when the first story was underway I glanced at her to see her reaction. Big mistake. We struggled to compose ourselves before we were spotted, trying to avoid each other's eyes. I don't know what I'd expected, but it probably involved someone pulling up a stool, leaning forward with lowered eyebrows, and starting "It was a dark and stormy night, and the wind howled in the rafters," from memory rather than carefully-prepared essays. These storytellers were part of a writing group, and horror of horrors, they wrote poetry too.

We scuttled off as soon as we dared while a reader held the others' attention, and escaped into the night. But what had happened to the moon? The sky was inky black, nothing visible a few yards beyond the lighted windows of the inn. We crept along the lane, hearts thumping as an owl made ghostly noises near our heads.Every tree looked menacing, and we cursed ourselves for forgetting torches.

James Childs, alias 'Did'

Earlier in the day 'Did' called round to kill off the grass and weeds in my back garden before the landscapers come in and transform the space. He rolled his ciggie, lit it, scratched his head under his cap and he was off. I now know how to get a reluctant retriever to do its job (it involves a hat, a dead rabbit, lots of determination and plenty of praise), how to stop a terrier doing what it does best (I think there's a dead rabbit in that one too, and maybe a hat ...), how to dispatch carrion crows, the hardest birds to shoot (not one for the squeamish, but they do eat hundreds of free-range chicken eggs a year), and the best way to stop your elms trees from getting Dutch Elm Disease (keep them under 15 feet). He's the genuine article, a countryman through and through. I gave him tea and chocolate cake when he'd finished, and we sat in the sun shooting the breeze. Well, he did. I just hung on his every word.