04/03/2026
A note from the storyteller.
Over the winter months each year, for many years now, we鈥檝e shared evenings of stories both in the Caffi鈥檙 Felin and the Big Roundhouse and over that time a community of people have gathered and grown. I delight in seeing and recognising familiar faces in our audiences, new ones each time of course - and that鈥檚 very special too - but to the ones that attend often - I would especially like to thank and to honour you. I don鈥檛 always have the privilege to greet all of you before the tale must begin or to linger about the fireside tables afterward to muse on what we just shared - but I see you and it deeply moves me to have your warm company for the many journeys we undertake. As I always say - a good tale takes place in that magical place between the tongue of the teller and the ears of the listener, yet more subtly, and perhaps more importantly, for me - between my heart and your hearts. For these tales I choose to share are ones that I鈥檝e found a deeper connection to, ones that I love - sometimes epics that span hours, other times shorter folktales, fairytales and wonder tales. Through our sharing over these evenings - we embark on shared adventures, reaching out to touch and affirm our common humanity, in all its vulnerable, fallible, aspiring, failing, heroic and humorous guises. I express the words and you see and feel, touch, scent and shape them and - through your presence - and your eyes - you then reflect them back to me. It is such a privilege to watch the stories take flight and flicker upon your faces and to experience your listening.
All the money raised at these evenings - through tickets and the sale of cakes and teas and coffees go directly toward both meeting the charity鈥檚 day to day running costs and is reinvested, to enable more such public events in the future. There is a marvellous team of extraordinary individuals who work behind the scenes - baking, prepping, stewarding to make these events possible and I salute you and am immensely grateful for your uncounted hours of unseen volunteer work and dedication. None of these things would be remotely possible without your generosity and gifted time, gentle care and love.
Not long ago - stories were shared about the firesides of winters evenings at the hearthside in crofts and cottages across remote, rural communities such as ours, between people that would have intimately known each other. Yet I don鈥檛 think they just came together for entertainment, to wile away the long and stormy winter nights - they came to affirm community, to celebrate their love and wonder at the power of the spoken word, to honour a sense of continuity, to belong, to re-member their ancestry and our journeys as human beings over the far flung corners of this earth. Times have changed; much has been forgotten. But we are doing it here. And though a disparate community - some wonderful people journeying here from hours away while other neighbours live just across the fields - still we are here reaffirming a shared sense of community. Between the spoken words, in the sighs and silences - bristles our anticipation, our boundless imaginative, creative, sparking selves. We weave such pictures in these story-spaces between us - masterpieces all !
After the leave taking and the last of your headlights have gone up the road - I sometimes get to sit alone, quietly about the embers. I get to feel the energy and presences that you have conjured and left dancing in these places - like spinning, glistening starlight, like silent music, like wingbeats. It鈥檚 a beautiful thing - and it鈥檚 of our making, of our togetherness. Where it goes thereafter and what it may do - I cannot say. But in this world of tumult, strife and shifting shadows - surely it must shine out brightly and warmly.
Diolch o galon gyfeillion,
Thank you, dear friends,
And here鈥檚 to our next adventures !
