How I came to storytelling

"I didn’t know it as a child of course, but looking back now I see that there was something magical about the village in which I was brought up.

With the benefit of 35 years hindsight I understand that something of the myths and legends that curl and whisper round the woodlands of Alderley Edge were seeping into my bones from a very early age.

Although I was born in Macclesfield, Cheshire it was in Alderley Edge, about 10 miles south of Manchester, that I bridged my life from childhood into adulthood. In fact the village of Alderley is, itself, something of bridge. On the one side the dynamic, unrelenting city of Manchester and on the other the rich, flat fields of the Cheshire plains.

And although Manchester has its stories too, it was Alderley’s legends - of a man, a sleeping king and of a mysterious guide who leads the way through Iron Gates deep into the heart of the hill - that made the most profound impression on me.

Of course I didn’t truly begin to understand the story until much later. My first true love was music. Piano at five years old - to conquer the mysterious power of those dots and notes on the page - and saxophone at nine opening me up to an extraordinary free world of musical improvisation.

By 18, as I was learning the technician’s skill as a sound engineer in theatre and radio, I had begun to discover traditional music for the first time. The tin whistle was every bit as expressive as the saxophone - and a lot easier to take on my travels.

But it wasn’t until the mid-90s when I returned to academic study, first with a degree in Countryside studies and later studying for a PhD in Cultural Geography, that I really found a new bridge for my own passions - of people, place, land and memory.

That bridge was storytelling. And it has always felt like a kind of healing, a homecoming that seemed to rouse my voice from a deep slumper, like the King in the hill. All words spoken are songs of a kind, for a moment crowned bright and set ringing in the air. Storytelling teaches this simple truth. It unlocks the music in our own voices as well as our culture.

Now, as a full-time performer, whether singing or speaking, I recognise the raw power of the word on the air. It is truly a force of nature and has the potential to transform all that it touches. The word is a bridge between worlds.