We don't mind what type of story it is; a story you were told as a child, a fictional story that you've created or it could be the story of your life.
During National Storytelling Week, we aim to fill this page with examples clips of your work.
Below are some of the stories that you wanted to tell us:
Audio Stories
Charley, aged 7, attends the Open Centre Kids Club and wrote this story about her family for National Storytelling Week:
Mia, aged 8, also attends the Kids Club and created a story called Curious Cats:
Richard Gorton tells the story of Chinese New Year:
Written Stories
The stories below were written by their named authors and were submitted as part of National Storytelling Week.
Bailey George and the Moon Nibbler
By Grandma Lynne
Bailey George was in his pyjamas, kneeling on his bed, elbows on the window sill gazing at the night sky. He was puzzled. He’d been doing this every night now, for nearly two weeks, watching from his window. Not only was he puzzled he was seriously worried. Something was eating the moon!
Only a week or so ago it was big and round and shining like a pearly balloon floating up there in the night sky. But now it was less than half the size, something was nibbling a bit away each night. Soon there would be nothing left – what then? Would it start eating away the stars, the earth, people?
As he sat there looking at this half slice of moon barely hanging up there, he wondered what the moon nibbler looked like and how big it was? Where did it live? Perhaps it lived in a space station circling the moon. Yes, that would be handy, it could just reach out and grab handfuls when it was hungry.
Watching patiently, hoping to catch the nibbler at it, he noticed something out of the corner of his eye, moving quickly downwards through the night sky. As it got nearer Bailey realised it was a small flying saucer, and it was heading for his garden. With a strange humming noise it landed down by the tree house. Some sort of window or doorway opened shedding a square of light onto the grass, and a flight of steps unfolded onto the lawn.
Bailey shoved his feet into his spiderman slippers and grabbed his dressing gown. He sneaked out of his bedroom and down the stairs trying not to hit the creaky bits. He needn’t have worried, Dad was snoring on the settee, so he slipped by him and into the conservatory. Mum was making packed lunches in the kitchen so she also missed his shadow as it passed. Bailey quietly opened the conservatory door and sped down the decking onto the grass and up to the flying saucer. He stood a moment, looking up at the bright doorway, snatched a swift glance at the house, and then he hopped up the steps and into the vessel.
As he passed inside, the steps flipped back up and the doorway clicked shut with a noise like a car seat belt fastening. There was complicated machinery in the centre and seats around the sides. Bailey sat down and a harness snapped into place. A metallic voice came out of the machinery “please keep your seatbelt fastened until arrival; have a good journey” and the humming started up again. Bailey felt a lurching feeling in his tummy and saw the city roof tops pass by the window, and then it was sky and clouds, then just midnight blue space, and twinkly stars.
After a while he got bored with the darkness and stars, closed his eyes and went to sleep.
He woke to the metallic voice telling him arrival was in two minutes, and to keep his seatbelt fastened till the vessel was completely stationary. He turned to look out of the window again and saw a round sparkling spikey thing approaching fast. It grew bigger and bigger till it filled the whole of the window. A hole appeared and that grew bigger too. Bailey realised with excitement that the flying saucer was entering some kind of space station. “Now I’ll get to find out the truth about the moon nibbler” he thought, not a bit scared.
The saucer shuddered to a stop and the seat harness clicked and retreated back into the seat. Bailey stood up as the door opened and the stairs folded outwards again. He stepped down onto a moving floor that took him into a very large silvery room full of lights and huge computer consoles.
Sitting at one of these was a rather large grey mouse wearing a lab coat and spectacles, which sat on the end of his nose so that the mouse looked as if he was peering out over the top.
“Hello” greeted the mouse to Bailey. “Hi yourself” Bailey replied “where am I?”
You’re on Moon Orbit station 1: monthly phase control. I’m Professor Right-Click, chief moon phase technician, at your service”.
“I’m Bailey George, what are you doing?” asked Bailey politely. “My job” replied the Professor “is to control the shutters on the moon. It is important that the amount of light falling on the earth at night is controlled in phases so that the plants know what part of the season it is, and therefore grow properly. They do most of their growing at night, you know; then there is the sea and coastal areas, they cannot cope with too much magnetic pull as it causes high tides and floods. So as each day passes I use this powerful computer to slowely close the moon shutter and then when it’s completely covered after two weeks, I slowely open it again. That way the tides and plants know where they are, and everyone gets a monthly breather. It’s quite a boring job really”.
“Oh” said Bailey disappointedly “I thought a monster was nibbling the moon away. I was afraid the earth might be next. I’m glad really though I did wonder what the monster looked like”.
“No” laughed the mouse “nothing so scary. Come, I’ll give you a tour of the station, some supper, and then get you back to your family”.
Professor Right-Click led Bailey on a tour of the station. There were many different departments, all staffed by mice of every colour, such as Crater Digging, Moon Dust Sweeping and Collection, Cheese Mining and a very important creative department that kept the face that was carved into the moon’s surface sharp and visible from the earth. “It keeps you earthlings reassured to see the man in the moon each night” explained the mouse.
After the tour they stopped by a very modern looking kitchen where a black and white patchy catering technician put plates of bread and bluey-green moon cheese in front of them, along with glasses of moon mare milk.
“So the moon really is made of cheese?” asked Bailey. “Oh not completely” replied the Professor “but there are pockets of cheese that have to be mined”. “And the moon mare milk?” queried Bailey. “Moon Mares are very flighty animals that live on the moon’s dark side, they’re very shy. But they also like moon cheese and are quite happy to be milked so long as we deliver them regular supplies” Professor Right-Click explained quite seriously. “Right” yawned Bailey, by now not a little confused and getting quite sleepy.
“I think its time to get you home, don’t you” and Professor Right-Click called for a robo-chair to carry him back to the saucer in the launch room.
After waving goodbye, Bailey sat down, the harness snapped into position again, and that’s all he remembered until next morning when he woke to find himself back in his bed, his mum shaking him awake.
“I had a really strange dream, Mum”.
“Oh yes Bailey, what about?”
“I went to the moon and met Professor Right-Click and he said there really is cheese on the moon but there is no moon nibbling monster, just the shutters.” Bailey jabbered away but mum was not really listening. Before he got dressed, though, Bailey was surprised to see crumbs of a bluey-green cheesy stuff stuck to his pyjamas. He smiled to himself “I knew it” he said to himself, and went to get washed.
The Tree Party Conspiracy
By Lynne
I was in trouble, though I didn’t yet know it; there was a conspiracy afoot to stop further betrayals, improve morale, and right the status quo. Things were about to change.
Up until my divorce I’d always had a real Christmas tree – it had been a ‘big thing’. No tacky, half bald imitation with rigid arms stuck out like signposts at a country cross-road, and papery tinsel pine needles slightly unwinding from red plastic bead berries on the ends, for me. And no colour-coordinated, designer package arrangements either. Absolutely not! The whole tree business was the focal point of the festive season and wasn’t to be tackled in any old amateurish, or overly pretentious way. I prided myself on my beloved collection of tree decorations. I had pieces that were more than 30 years old; bits and bobs picked up in craft shops, at Christmas markets, on holidays abroad, or sent by pen friends from around the world. These toys and ornaments told the story of Christmas in my family since the children, now adults with families (and trees) of their own, were tiny. So a real tree to display such treasures on was an absolute necessity. Anyway it was tradition wasn’t it, to bring some ever-greenery into the house at midwinter; a custom, a matter of ensuring abundance in the coming year, and protecting the house from bad spirits during the cold, dark, wintry months. And tradition was everything at Christmas.
But things move on. Since living on my own, following a messy divorce, it had become increasingly difficult to deal with a real tree (I always knew there had to have been one good reason for putting up with him for so many years longer than I should have): getting the prickly monster in the car, out again and into the house, potting it so it stayed upright, and then risking knocking it over again as I struggled to wrap the electric lights around it before dressing it in those wonderful toys. And then, I convinced myself, real tree branches were too supple and bendy to hold up some of the heavier, beautiful glass toys like the Waterford crystal turkey I’d bought on a holiday to southern Ireland, and the Swarovski star bought for me by my best friend and fanatical lover of Swarovski crystal.
So two years ago I had succumbed to the persistent DIY shop TV ads enthusing the qualities of their seasonal products, and bought one of their ‘hard to tell from the real thing’ artificial trees at what I indignantly felt was an outrageous price. Still, it WAS very realistic – once you’d assembled the 48 or so colour coded and toilet brush spiky branches onto the 6 foot high articulated ‘trunk’, which in turn needed slotting into a complicated contraption aimed at keeping it balanced and upright. Oh dear! Had I just exchanged one set of problems for another, different set? But by the time it was up and dressed, it did look beautiful in an even, symmetrical kind of way. And there it stood, for the duration of the festive season, in all its sterile glory, in the corner of my spacious (empty) Victorian-style living room.
For all intents and purposes, it WAS straight out of a Victorian Christmas card (in more ways than one). Every morning I went to open the blinds, and each evening to turn on the lights, and my brain did a double somersault as I SAW a real looking tree but SMELT nothing. No evocative pine scent – it might just as well have been cut out of the aforementioned card. At those times I really did miss the real thing (tree or man or both was the unanswerable question that surfaced from the deep recesses of my subconscious, at these times). “Think of the vacuuming…” I reminded myself, to console my longing.
But Christmases come and go, and on two consecutive twelfth nights, the tree was dismantled, and put away for another year - until now;.
With December upon us again, here I am, less than three weeks to go till the big C day; and its time to get the tree and boxes of decorations down from the loft where my son had stored them last year.
But not today; today I’m off to visit the local garden centre in order to buy the ubiquitous Poinsetta, a holly wreath for the front door and, hopefully, some mistletoe (fat chance of using it mind you … nevertheless….)
As I walked around the outside plant area, in a Christmassy daydream, I suddenly found myself being drawn to the real Christmas trees piled over by the fence. Next to them were several rooted trees. I felt strangely that I was being ‘reeled in’ by the pungent pine smell, like a fisherman with a plump salmon. I halted in front of a medium sized rooted tree sat in an ugly plastic terracotta pot.
“At last” said a punky young woman sitting provocatively, in a very short skirt and Doc Martens, on a branch of the said tree.
“I was beginning to get quite breathless wafting this pine-scented incense at you” (she had a stick of the offending stuff in her hand looking a bit like a pantomime fairy’s wand).
Stunned, and not a little scared, and to tell the truth, embarrassed, I looked quickly around in case anyone was watching me finally going crazy through loneliness. Other people just ended up talking to themselves. I was talking to a …what?
I looked back up at the tree branch – nope – still there; not, sadly, my head playing mind-games as I hoped.
“Its no use, you’ll have to accept the evidence of your own eyes” spoke the little female, teasingly “I’m real, and not going anywhere, not till we’ve sorted some things out anyway!”
“Ww what, w who are you?” I stammered, ignoring the last intriguing comment. I peered a little closer at the spiky haired, pointy eared (were those hoopy earrings, and a nose stud I spied?), and very tiny but perfect young woman grinning down at me from amongst the pine needles. I could clearly see the small, fragile, iridescent wings attached to the small person’s shoulders, and sprouting through a not very weather-wise though bright, Christmas berry red, cropped t-shirt (wasn’t she cold?). My eyes widened in surprise and suddenly, a flood of warm amusement spread through my body and a smile of delight broke spontaneously and unbidden across my face as it dawned on me just what I was looking at. A REAL LIFE ….Fairy? And not the pretty-pretty, gossamer dressed Barbie-like example that annually sits on top of the Christmas tree either. I rather liked this more radical version.
“Are you a Fairy?” I asked the miniscule punk, rather limply in the circumstances.
“Yep, though technically I’m a Plant Deva or Tree Spirit. My job is to ‘remember’ the pattern of the trees I look after – in my case the Pine tree. Each plant species has someone like me”.
“Oh” I replied, not really knowing how to answer this amazing, if somewhat disconcerting, creature.
“I’ve never seen something, erm someone, like you before. How come I can see you now?”
“I’m always around my trees at sometime or other. I’ve been in your house lots of times. In fact you are one of my favourite people to visit because you take Christmas tree dressing so seriously, in a fun kind of way, of course. Your Christmas trees are always so beautifully and lovingly decorated; except for the last couple of years. Why have you abandoned us?” The punky fairy had stopped smiling now, and was sitting there looking very sad, and a touch less visible.
“My friends and I have had such wonderful parties in and around your trees” she reflected with nostalgia “we loved watching your children open their presents beneath the tree when they were small. They could see us you know. We’ve enjoyed nibbling the mince pies, and sipping the ginger wine you thoughtfully left out every year for Santa. Until two years ago”. The Fairy was now sitting with her legs crossed and her arms held tightly to her small body, looking equally defiant, vulnerable, and accusingly at me.
I sighed and realised that I was beginning to feel very guilty.
“I had no idea” I said shaking my head in wonder.
“I … I … it just became too hard on my own, getting it into the house and into a pot, and for who – just me on my own, or so I thought”. I tried to explain why I had opted for an artificial tree last year but ran out of words, the argument sounded lame, even to my ears.
“Look, don’t worry about all that. I’ve got an idea.” The Fairy Deva had started to look mischievously thoughtful.
“Why don’t you invite your friends and family round? You’ve always understood the importance of dressing the tree, and it is, believe me, important. It’s the highlight of our Tree Deva year. Why not pass on your enjoyment of tree dressing and encourage others. In return for some festive fare, your guests will help you put up the tree and it won’t feel such a strain. And I’ll throw in a few extras too” she finished enigmatically.
I was still a bit unconvinced.
“Come on” continued the Fairy “it’s a good excuse for a party, and you can’t ever have enough parties”.
Then I looked up at my new found friend, blinked a couple of times, let the idea take seed comfortably in my mind, and then smiled. If our sizes had been compatible I would have grabbed this Fairy sister and hugged her.
“It’s a brilliant idea” I admitted “and kills more than one bird with a stone, if you excuse the bloodthirsty allusion”. I was thinking sadly how lonely and fed up I had been feeling.
“Understood” agreed the Deva.
“As you said, it IS a good excuse for a party and I HAVE been feeling very sorry for myself”.
“Great” decided Deva Punk “and I’ll round up some of my Deva mates – we’ll add a bit of special sparkly magic, and ensure the lights work, and don’t get entangled when someone wraps them around the tree. They won’t even notice how awkward and prickly that job is”.
“And I’ll make some spiced wine and lots of mince pies and …..” the Deva must have waved her incense stick again then as she faded from view. I wandered over to speak to an assistant, to ask him for help loading a rooted tree into my car, wondering if I would ever see her again.
The Pine Deva told me afterwards that she then watched my tense face lighten and relax as I went to buy my REAL tree, at last. I was finally getting into the proper seasonal spirit, and planning my party whilst the fairy vision I’d just experienced was fading from my view.
The tiny fairy had then, she later told me, winked at her friends who were anxiously sat watching the proceedings from their respective plants or trees.
“We’ll be alright this year folks; another year of someone believing enough in us to dress their tree, and our annual bean-feast is on again too…” she had projected her thoughts around the garden centre “ … are you coming to the party?”
One last thing she did for me then, my new mini friend, that later changed everything for ever;
“Apple Tree Deva” she had called “is that human widower who’s planting an orchard, free that night? Can you project the idea that he NEEDS to knock on that woman’s door on party night, please, I’m sure you can come up with a creative reason for him to do that….”.
