Well, the two Spinney Hollow dates didn't happen: aqua vincit omnia! But the Museum of Army Flying did, and it was AWESOME! Not necessarily me, but all the rest of the organisation, the vast underlit museum space with the circle of little electric night-lights which echoed the fence of glowing-eye skulls that surrounds Baba Yaga's chicken-legged cottage in any story about her that I've eveir heard or told. So, given the atmosphere already created, I had little else to do but tell my stories, which I did, including a couple of previously written ones: TRICK OR TREAT and NOTHING EVER HAPPENS IN LINCOLNSHIRE [on my mikerotheatre website, if you want to read them].
A welcome surprise was my summons to Fratton [I'm told that "getting off at Fratton" has a particular significance, but I drove there instead of catching the train, so it can't apply to me!] I told in the Community Centre to pre-school kids and Living at Home adults, so pretty much both ends of the age-spectrum. For the adults, I told stories that Dickens had written down: two Nurse's tales from The Uncommercial Traveller, "Captain Murderer" and "Chips", and The Signalman.
At school, I have told three tales from the Mabinogion: the tale of Gwydion, Lleu Llaw Gyffes, Blodeuedd/Blodeuwedd and Gronw Pebr; and the tales of Rhiannon and Pwll, and Rhiannon, Manawydan, Pryderi and Cigfa, with the wasting of Dyfed. The kids seemed bemused, but liked them.
