|
|
The Storyteller was
on his way to Spain. He was sitting
next to the window in the rather small single engine plane which, that day, had
been the quickest way to get there. He
was in a hurry, you see. There was
to be the biggest Storytelling Festival ever in Madrid, starting the very next
day and the organisers were in a panic because their Head Storyteller, Senor
Caja de Historias, had disappeared.
One minute he had been there and the next he wasn’t – it was as
simple as that. The organisers had
phoned the Storyteller straight away and he had jumped on the plane.
He was a bit uncomfortable about the whole thing to tell you the truth,
he was allergic to paella in the first place and, although the odd glass of
sangria went down very well, in the second place his Spanish was not good at all
and he would need to keep a clear head.
As he got off the plane
and walked towards the two-seater moped the organisers had sent to pick him up,
he thought he saw a dark figure
flit behind a nearby flower stall and, would you believe it, as the moped shot
away from the airport (the Storyteller very nearly fell off the back as it
happens so his mind was, shall we say, elsewhere at the time) he really did
think he saw a huge bunch of flowers scurrying off to a waiting taxi.
He shook his head to clear his mind and concentrated on the mad dash
towards the centre of Madrid.
The moped came to such
a sharp stop in front of the Jefaturas
del Festival” that the Storyteller did fall off the back and, would you
believe it, the driver just drove off without a backward glance, leaving him
there on the pavement in a heap! As
he struggled up and grabbed his suitcase a rather pretty pink tulip appeared in
front of his nose. It said:
“No,
no, everyone has gone off to the sangria factory on a tour – come with me, I
will take you there!”
Now
the Storyteller was just wondering how on earth a pretty pink tulip could
possibly take him anywhere when he looked a bit closer and saw it was being held
by a man. A man who made the
Storyteller feel very frightened indeed. First
there was a dark hat coming right down to the man’s nose, then there was a
black scarf coming right up to the man’s mouth (in the middle of summer too!)
and the end of the man’s nose was very pointed and unpleasantly pimply.
I am sure you are not surprised that the Storyteller was very, very
suspicious (his mother had always told him to beware of people with pointed and
unpleasantly pimpled noses!).
However,
before the Storyteller could say “Si” or “No” the man grabbed him
and threw him hard into the back of the taxi and they sped off through the
backstreets and alleyways of Madrid.
The
Storyteller was not surprised, after a good twenty-three minutes spent being
thrown about in the back of the speeding car, to find himself dragged into a
dark warehouse by the man with the pointed and unpleasantly pimpled nose and to
hear the sound of the taxi speeding off once more.
A
dim light filtered through the blackened and dusty windows of the warehouse and
there, in a corner, huddled up into a sad, small bundle, lay Senor
Caja de Historias. The
Storyteller rushed over to him and checked that he was still alive.
He was, he was just very, very sad (and small and bundle-like).
The Storyteller turned
to the man with the pointed and unpleasantly pimpled nose who cried gleefully:
“Aha, this
Storytelling Festival will never go ahead now!
I have both of you and this means that our Flamenco Dancing Festival, for
which we had sold very few tickets, will become the main event and we will make
pots and pots of money and you…….you……will just stay here and rot!”
The Storyteller thought
for a minute and then started to tell one of his tales. He didn’t tell it as he normally would, he told it in a
very flat and monotonous voice. When
he had finished, he told another, and another and even another.
By this time, even Senor
Caja de Historias was looking quite white and sickly and had
started to fidget dreadfully. But the man with the pointed and unpleasantly
pimpled nose was beside himself with boredom.
If I say he started fiddling with his unpleasant pimples I think you will
understand what I mean. He fiddled
and fiddled until his nose looked and felt quite horrible.
We won’t go into details but he found himself in the position of being
in rather a lot of pain. After the
hundredth tale he rushed out of the warehouse looking desperately for something
to calm the horrid burning sensation right on the tip of his nose.
He rushed here, there and everywhere and
ended up by jumping into the river in a final attempt to ease the pain.
In the meantime, of
course, the Storyteller and Senor
Caja de Historias, were able to make their way back to the Jefaturas
del Festival and together, they put on the best show ever and were treated as
heroes for at least nine days.
The
man with the pointed and unpleasantly pimpled nose?
Do we really want to know? Oh
alright then, he did manage to crawl out of the river and drag himself to the
Flamenco Dancing Festival. Unfortunately,
Senorita Bailarín del Flamenco was
having a bad hair day that day and stamped and stomped, stomped and stamped all
over his dripping body as he lay exhausted at her feet!
Without going into too much detail, the resulting splatter of pimples
made the cobblestones so slippery
that all flamenco dancing had to be cancelled for the next three months.
Shame!
| Home | Storytelling | Education | Fun |