Telling stories

When I was a child my teachers used to complain that I was always 'telling stories': that I had done this and that and I usually had. The writer in me was crowded in at school and only escaped in the letters I wrote to my absent mother — something we did until the week she died, a few days before her 86th birthday.

They weren't all sweet and lovely, my politics and her behaviour saw to that, but I never feel happier than when I have a fountain pen in hand and a spiral A5 pad before me and, as if by magic, the former begins to write upon the latter and what I see before me I didn’t know until I see it there, for that is how I write.

I suspect is goes back to those childhood days when telling stories usually got me out of trouble. I'm sure my love of buses comes from overheard conversations when alone, aged 4, I began to visit my mother. Put on a bus, penny in hand, and met the other end. I used to count the stops. 23 on way, 21 the other. Strange that. Still I listen, rarely seeing faces. Those talking are either backs of heads or nostrils breathing down my neck, Sitting sideways isn’t much better, unless they are opposite.

Now my stories are for me, to give my mind a better place to live in these dark times and if you want to come along please do.

Robert Howard