Storytelling Sunday Two: The Words The Pictures

Welcome to Storytelling Sunday! It's the first Sunday of the month and that means it's time for our merry band of storytellers to gather round and offer us a tale or two or three..

Everyone is welcome. We like our stories any way we can find them: short, long, small or tall, we'll read them all! And if you would like to join us, all you have to do is create a Storytelling Sunday post, letting your readers know what it's all about then come back over here and link us up. Newcomers are always made to feel at home - everyone meets someone new when they join Storytelling Sunday! So don't hold back, come and join us: you'll find an audience just waiting and ready...

..and I think that's my cue to begin

A Helping Hand

It was a dark and stormy night and Uncle Sam was working late at the shop. He was studying to be a pharmacist, in the days when chemists seemed a little like conjurers with their own remedies at hand; and he was putting in a few hours at what was rumoured to be the oldest shop around. Certainly it looked as if it had been there the day Dickens came to town; and everyone knew that was where, as a little boy, CS Lewis had been dosed with cough medicine. They knew because their Grandmas had been there and watched him splutter. So, you have a picture in your head by now? Bow windows, little leaded panes of glass, a polished wooden counter and a hand painted sign hanging from a curly cast iron bracket.

That sign was creaking in the wind the night Uncle Sam sat on his wooden stool, high up in the attic, practising what he had begun to learn: making pills himself the old, original way. It was round this time of year: November, foggy, pitch black outside, blustery, and the lights flickered as the pile of tablets grew.

Photo from our trip to Blists Hill Victorian Town 2010

It was getting late. He rubbed his eyes, leaned back to stretch his back and as he did, he heard a noise. Someone was coming up the stairs. He hadn't been expecting a visitor - staying late was the student's job - but into the room came an elderly gentleman; maybe his boss's age, maybe a bit older, and he nodded and walked over to see what Uncle Sam was doing. he threw back his head and laughed and he shook the pills out of their moulds and he started again. He showed Uncle Sam a few tricks, never saying much, but what he did seemed to work, and the little piles of medicines grew as the wind howled and the lights dipped. And then, out of the corner of his eye, Uncle Sam caught a shimmering, rippling movement; and, when he turned, he realised that the man had gone. Simply, quietly, without saying a word. It was strange. It was. But students (especially, perhaps, pharmacy students?) sometimes like to accept strange; and, after all, the work was now done. Uncle Sam shrugged his shoulders, slipped on his coat and went home.

He asked around. No one knew who the man was, though it was agreed that his work was exemplary. And that was what led someone to suggest the story of the original owner of the chemist shop. Long gone, now; he had died in a terrible accident, many years ago, on one dark November's night..

I didn't hear this story from Uncle Sam. I heard it from his sister, my Mum. She told it, she let it hang in the air and then she laughed and said "I'll have to be honest. Years later he told us that he had made it up." But then we got to talking and thinking and here's the thing - Uncle Sam is known as a good, honest man. He always has been. Would he have pulled a story like this out of thin air? Or was he testing it out? Did something really happen and he wasn't sure if he wanted to believe it himself? So he tested it out as a story to see what the world would say? Uncle Sam isn't telling, so I'll leave you to decide...

And when you've had a think, please do have a hop around and enjoy some more stories. The audience is an important part of Storytelling Sunday - it doesn't work if you aren't there to listen! So have a read, say hello, we're all ready for you.

Adding a link? You have all week to do it - the linky list won't close until next Sunday. And if you make a layout to go with your story, I'll add it to the Storytelling Sunday Pinterest Board.