Once upon a time...
by Wyn Evans
My daughter, The Girl, is fifteen years old and loves a good story. When she was in primary school we would anticipate the arrival of inset days and holidays with ever-increasing excitement. I would allow the Girl a lie-in, perhaps for no more than an hour beyond her usual term-time alarm call but this was enough. She would run from her bedroom and into mine and The Boss’s room, jump under the duvet, and demand “it’s time for a story”! Back then, she didn’t want stories from a book, she was much more interested in creating our own tales of derring-do. It was important to her that both our dogs featured, that The Boss and I were at some degree of risk and that we be saved by our Girl with the dogs’ assistance. There was often a super-power involved, one which had lain dormant in real life. These did not have to be SUPER super-powers – while she was not averse to an ability to fly or demonstrate mega-strength, she was also quite content if the super ability was more homespun. I recall her being delighted when one story involved our hero being able to sharpen pencils - without a pencil sharpener! 6 CARDIFF TIMES
The story had to begin with ‘once upon a time’. Thus, “once upon a time in a large house by the park lived a family of a dad, a mum, a princess, and their two dogs, Kira and Meggie. One evening, they were sitting in their big, bright front room when they heard a squeaking from the corner behind the sofa. The bold princess went to see what was happening and found a mouse-hole that was getting bigger and bigger. Bravely, the princess stepped through the hole and entered a world where things were similar to our real world, but different...”. Then the story would go in whatever direction we fancied, ending only when the characters survived mortal peril, and escaped back through the mouse-hole, which closed behind them, “...the end”. I’m sure we have all read about how JK Rowling invented the Harry Potter universe as a bed-time tale she made up for her kids and that it was only subsequently that she turned the characters and plots into the literary equivalent of a cash machine. More even than I am in awe of JKR’s net worth, I remain astonished by the fecundity of her imagination. She was surely only able to monetise her creations because the plotlines and characters caught kids’ imaginations and developed a life all of their own; each child identifying with something or someone of her creations; and all against the background eschatology of a Manichaean struggle between good and evil, right and wrong, life and death. Given that the best I could come up with was the Super Pencil Sharpener Man, I think some degree of respect is the very least I can offer Ms Rowling. Gradually, these story mornings on inset days and holidays morphed into story evenings: The
