Christmas 2013
The theme for our Christmas meeting was “Fairy Tales”, to
which everyone was invited to contribute a synopsis of a story, or to read one, as they wished. The readings would
be interspersed with a buffet supper to sustain ourselves – could be a long
night with 9 Fairy Tales to get through!
Without any pre-planning of the readings (unlike the supper,
which was planned and replanned to the ‘nth degree) they were satisfyingly
varied and made for a really interesting evening.
We opened with a tale from Angela Carter’s “The Snow Child”,
a full blooded story called “The Bloody Chamber” which got us off to a flying
start. This was followed with “Tattercoats”
a delightful story retold by Margaret Grieves but with a traditional feel.
We then heard “The Wise Little Girl”, a satisfyingly
moralistic Russian tale from Hans Christian Anderson – the title said it
all!
We then had a couple of less traditional stories – one from
Alison Uttley “The Seven Sleepers”, and “The Girl Who Loved the Wind” by Jane
Yolen – again , stories that were new to most of us, but with a timeless feel
to them.
A traditional Spanish story next from Andrew Lang’s
collection : “Medio Pollito”, again a moralistic traditional tale untouched by
modern political correctness ! Staying with tradition, this time from a Hindu
origin, a personal memory from an Ayah’s retelling, we had the story from the Ramayana of Hanuman
the Monkey God.
Our final two tales
were different again – “How the Camel Got its Hump” from Kipling’s Just
So Stories, and the story of Cinderella
- a traditional tale with a more
an anarchic modern twist from
Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes.
A feast of imagination;
seasonal, timeless and highly enjoyable.
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