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I make things up! yep, I'm a self-confessed liar, I tell people things that aren't real - or true - and even worse I get paid to do it! Okay, this might sound a little dishonest but it isn't I'm a storyteller - or a 'narratist' I work with words, ideas, adventures, my world is a world of light-fingered hares, wicked wolves, reindeer gods, seal queens and eel kings, I live in a world of demon possessed cars and ghost aircraft. I first realised i was part of a long line of storytellers when I was a little boy, on holiday at my grans house with my mum and my aunts. When you're eight or nine you get ignored and you hear all these strong women telling stories about uncles, the war, poverty, an East end of London that vanished years ago and you take things in.
Well, one evening we where walking home from an aunt's house and I said to my mum; "Auntie Emmy was lying, wasn't she?" which earned a demand to know what I meant. "Well, she said it was uncle Lenny who was stopped by the policemen with two rabbits down his trousers, but you said it was uncle Johnny with two pheasants down his trousers." Mum smiled at me and replied; "We all know it was uncle Freddie with two trout down his trousers, we just don't let truth get int he way of a good story". Now, this troubled me for many years - adults who lied and were proud of it no less, then it hit me like a lightening bolt; you see my mum's family were incredibly poor before WW2, my gran and grandad had THIRTEEN children in TWO rooms. My mum told me that all the kids slept in one room - boys at one end, girls at the other like sardines, and she would watch the rats run around the picture rail, Gran and grandad slept in the living room with the newest baby. My gran lost five children under the age of five. My aunts and uncles all knew the truth behind the stories, they all knew it was uncle Freddie - it wasn't the story it was the telling of the story, it was what had kept them together - I realised stories were THAT important!