The National Trust's event, outdoors in a wood near Wellow, was cancelled for lack of interest - which was just as well, because the indoor one at The Museum of Army Flying in Wallop was subscribed to the limit, and I ended up doing two end-on sessions for each age-group, telling for three hours virtually without a break - to tell the truth, stopping was the hard bit!
They were lovely, attentive audiences, and I did my best to give them what they deserved. For the younger ones, I sandwiched Beautiful Vasilissa between two brand-new stories that I had invented the previous morning while walking the dogs. These were Jeremy Swaps His Clothes and Mine!, and sooner or later I will write down versions of them and post them on my mikerotheatre blogspot. Jeremy developed a whole extra area of character around his relationship with his mother, which simply hadn't been there when I told the bare bones of it to my friend, James Willson, while driving two dead freezers to the corporation tip in the morning. [I'm enormously grateful to James for his love of stories, since it lets me try them out, without having to go around talking to myself...]. I definitely sensed empathy from adults and children where that difficult relationship was concerned - and in this story, as in Mine! I deliberately tried to leave the audience with work to do, if they were to understand what was going on. Mine! was perhaps more traditional, but, as I always do, I gave it psychological motivation: there ought to be a reason why someone is the victim of a ghost, it shouldn't just be mere chance! I also tidied up Vasilissa as I was telling it, managing, I hope, to incorporate the three mysterious riders slightly more seamlessly than many versions I have read. I trimmed the tests to one [separating onion seed and poppy seed - not least because I actually know what they both look like!] and effectively cut to the chase... Thought for the future: which of the skulls does she take and why? [Whose skulls are they, anyway? Would they plead their cause? If I'd had longer, we might all have found out...]
For the 8+, I was very bold and decided to tell only two stories, both of them quite demanding and moving, the first with a definitely unhappy ending, the second for sure with a happy one. The first, with a personal frame, is told in a pub near Wayland's Smithy, by the great-grand-daughter of the woman who experienced it; and a pretty young archaeologist, called Adela, who is drinking in the same pub, contributes the vital information needed to make disturbing sense of the events. [Even so, I like to thin that some of my listeners went home asking their Mums and Dads, "Is that why....?" I want to tell stories that stay in the mind and stick like a burr.] The happy one was Mary of Eling, which I stole years ago from Rob Iliffe and too seriously, whereas he told it a little jokily. It has a superb structure and more or less tells itself - but I still get a catch in the throat and a tear in the eye at the climax.
Perhaps it was a bit severe, filling the forty-odd minutes with so few stories - but wouldn't you rather have two really good pieces of home-cooking than a trayful of sickly bought desserts?
My thanks to Rebecca of the Museum, who has hired me for the second year now! Let's hope she makes it a third - with some other stuff in between!
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