Lesley O'Brien and her LeprechaunsWhat a treat of a session we had on the 30th October with the marvellous storyteller Lesley O'Brien who took us for a singing walk seeking leprechauns and berries for our bucket with this piece:
Hey Little Leprechaun
Hey little leprechaun where have you gone?
I am still looking for my pot of gold
I tied a ribbon to a treasure tree
If I turn my back, you will try to fool me
Please don’t take my gold
‘cause I know your little heart can be cold
One for the bucket and one for me
Two for the bucket and two for me,
Three for the bucket and three for me
Four for the bucket and four for me
Granny told me all about you
With a beard the colour of Irn Bru
Please don’t take my gold
‘cause the end of the rainbow has been sold
Hey little leprechaun where have you gone?
Into the hillside you have run
Oh, for a year and a day
Now I must wait and pray
One for the bucket and one for me
Two for the bucket and two for me,
Three for the bucket and three for me
Four for the bucket and four for me
As always some stunning writing came out of the session - here's a taste:
Rations
by Catrice Greer
("I kept the lyrics and credited to Lesley properly but, I've changed the delivery to an early 40's jazz standard delivery when sung so I won't come off as a marauding thief in the night of her beautiful brilliance.")
“Please don’t take my gold *
because the end of the rainbow has been sold
we’re told.”
Is there an amber dewdrop left for me,
the honey-sweet nectar,
a tear of agape?
Where did you hide it in these brambles, tumbleweeds?
Under the brush where no one can see?
In between the double-talk,
the words of silver-tongued politicians
recklessly carved in trees, signposts to destruction
or paving the way forward?
We are at the fork in the road
that feels more like the knife that cuts us
out of Eden’s fecund well-nested garden
Get in! We are chasing rainbows, hurricanes, and tornados
funneled by their own grinding compass
unhinged un-screwed
at least they have some direction
follow a path Mother naturally carved
in the dust tracked footsteps
leveling sleepy towns so we can see plain
Taste the manna, sip the dew
on unfurled petals and leaves
we’ll eat our daily bread, nibble our cud
from delicate seedlings sown
Here, I’ll give you one, and you give to me*
“One for the bucket and one for me *
Two for the bucket and two for me”
“Please don’t take my gold *
because the end of the rainbow has been sold,
we’re told.”
* Inspired by the lovely dramatic work/song “Hey Little Leprechaun” by Lesley O. Rutherglen
Here's one from Cap'n Bev for a change!
Filling my Belly or Filling the Bucket?
by Bev Schofield
How full need my belly be till I begin to fill the bucket?
How big a bucket do I snatch from the bucket hanging rail?
Should I take a tiny one, quickly filled, job easily done,
then I can skip and guzzle, love the living sun-filled
lazy days. But the world needs me to do my part…
so much need… I should take the largest bucket
and pick and pick and pick, though I know it
will never be filled, till I collapse in
exhausted starvation, letting all
the berries in the bucket spill.
I must find the right size bucket.
Am I the bucket?
Or is the bucket me?
Our Helen, a teacher, has been much busier than the rest of us through lockdown but has found time to submit a piece of prose quite apt for Water Story... thanks Helen!
Lifejacket
by Helen Elsley
The smallest and most recent swimmer, I was the only one who had to wear a lifejacket. I slipped it off whenever their backs were turned, walked sure-footed and free over the roof of the barge, stepped off at bridges and trailed along the towpath half-drunk on head-high meadowsweet.
My mother fell in first. Pushing off from a mooring, she made the rookie error of leaving her feet on the bank. “Frank,” she snapped, “Frank. Do something!” Her body slowly went horizontal between towpath and departing boat, before she had to step inevitably off into cold wildfowl-scattering water up to her waist.
Next, my brothers. Given free rein in an inflatable dinghy, they paddled blithely under the run-off from a lock and were swamped, slowly sinking side by side until only their crew cuts were visible, dark and fair among the foam.
My big sister, schlepping along the side wearing the last word in seventies Swedish clogs, slipped wooden-soled into the industrial waters of Birmingham at the back of a sanitary-ware factory. A row of toilet bowls along the edge of the yard looked down on her floundering as the buoyant clogs bobbed to the surface.
My father seemed safe enough, feet planted, hand on tiller, pirate king for a week. But spectacularly, impossibly, he managed to steer into a flooded field and waded off to fetch a farmer with a tractor and a towrope. I surely cannot remember this, and yet I do, and he is not here to ask. I remember him humming, tuneless as the 4-mile-an-hour engine, happy. At the swing bridge where he had hung about to help as an evacuee, his own long-ago canal summer was close enough to touch in the handle on the winding mechanism.
Lifejacket spurned, I stayed bone-dry and told-you-so triumphant.
