Telling Tales

Last week, my friends at ‘Creativity in Care’ and their friends they had met and worked with over the last few months, perhaps even years, hosted a performance of puppets in our local theatre. It was called ‘Windows of Reality’.

Lockdown stories had been listened to, what people needed to say but didn’t know who they could say it to. The craft side of the stories came through creating puppets with papier mache heads decorated with ears, noses, mouths and eyes of various shapes and shades. It was a colourful display of over 100 puppets.

Some of the puppets were set out as small scenes on a table with a recorded narration to listen to. Some of them were just puppets messing around with sandwiches and a clear message of the need to share.

But it was the big puppets and the people sharing their lockdown stories that were the focus of the show. The whole afternoon was given to people standing, holding their own made puppet and telling an audience just how it was for them. So many of the support teams they had in place to make it through a day were dismantled and they were left to find their own path through. Some found a home on Zoom or similar media platforms to connect with others, some did cooking sessions via YouTube. But there were some that never made it. It was all too much.

I wasn’t one of the people with the puppets. I was one of the audience, for a short time, listening and feeling the need sometimes to find a toilet cubicle and cry my eyes out. You see, for me, lockdown wasn’t so different from normal life. I could indulge a hermit gene and no one would ask who I had visited or whether I had been out. I had time to write, to read, to knit and to watch box sets if I so wished. It wasn’t a hardship, although towards the end I was eager for face to face company. I’m not one of the lucky ones. It’s not luck or bad luck that sends people along a certain path. I don’t know what it is. I just say that I am blessed.

I wrote a poem.

Morag

You can say anything with

a puppet on your arm and

so it is Morag, with her

papier mache head, who shares

my lockdown story to a small audience, and

if her button eyes could weep -

they would.

It was just a one-day event. It took up an afternoon and every hour was a different set of stories. I thought I had lost one of my hearing aids and later found it on the floor by my chair. Big rooms and quiet speakers don’t always lend themselves to a good hearing environment.

It was lovely to see all the support from friends and family. But there were people who weren’t there, that should have been, the politicians, the SMPs, the councillors and the like were not there. The decisions that they made that put people into lockdown, whatever the reason behind it, they didn’t see the puppets or hear the stories. I suppose they have a ‘know’ from their own friends and families, their own lockdown experiences – but if they are like me and flourish without needed support, then they didn’t know. Being told things in a government chamber is not the same as seeing a puppet and hearing a story. (OK maybe seeing puppets comes with the territory).

A second poem, same story, different angle…

Better By Far

The government can’t help

but presume it is better by far

in every sphere of human endeavour

than anyone else.

It’s why it doesn’t ask for directions

when the sat-nav breaks down,

why it doesn’t listen to the traveller who

has been that way before,

and it forges its own curious route

through those pandemic years

of lockdowns, masks and social distance -

all just a little too late in the embracing.

‘Better for who?’ asks the wife

stuck in her home with a violent husband.

‘Better for who? asks the daughter

unable to visit her father in a care home.

‘Better for who?’ asks the laid off worker

unemployed and yet the bills keep coming.

We are still waiting for an answer.

Giving people a chance to tell their story, and listening to that story and responding to it matters. So many stories don’t get told. And sometimes we don’t listen to hear. We are just waiting for a pause that is long enough for us to launch into our own story.

The dog we are minding is having a bad day. She really isn’t well. The tail is down. Even if I could speak ‘dog’ she is not talking. I have a good reason not to know what the story is. I am not a dog whisperer, and not being our dog, we don’t know the body language well enough to work out what is wrong. But then, the advantage to that is I can’t interrupt her with my own story. I can only sit beside her and stroke her.

Maybe that’s what we all need. Perhaps not always an exchange of stories, but time sat together.