Category Archives: The Long Walk

#MyTime Week 12 – Crafting Stories

This week’s #MyTime theme has been a little elusive.  In previous weeks, I was able to select things that had presented themselves to me during the week past or for the week to come.  But this week, well I’ve been doing many of the things that I’ve already noted – seeing family, reading, singing, bottling honey – so I wondered if some of these weeks in the countdown to 60 might be revisiting themes.  That may well be true as I go through the process but I think there is something else that is important for me to capture as a #MyTime theme, and something this website had been established to fulfill.  And that is crafting stories.  I did a year-long Twitter project (#Talein10) to write a tale in ten words each day in an attempt to keep open the story door within lots of time constraints and I haven’t done as much as I would have liked since then but now is the time to set out that intention.

When I have time, I’d like to fill in some of the gaps in my grandfather’s story of The Long Walk and there are many more stories for me to craft, re-discover and tell.

So, #MyTime at minus 29 weeks of my countdown is “Crafting Stories”.

Treasured recording

What a treat to hear my grandfather’s voice once more. I’ll be posting his story soon but tonight I have listened again to the tapes where he is reading his story of ‘The Long Walk’ and remembered with fondness his principled and gentle ways. Twenty-seven years since his death yet tonight it seems like he was with us only yesterday.

Read the foreword to The Long Walk

Hand-written and precious

I transcribed my grandfather’s story many years ago, some years after his death but whilst my father was still alive and able to help me make contact and share copies with close friends of my grandfather and near and distant family members. There is also a copy in Birmingham Library, lodged there by Carl Chinn who also kindly wrote a piece in the Birmingham Mail as part of its ‘Old Brum’ magazine features.

book and article

Book and newspaper article

But it is in re-visiting my grandfather’s story now that I have once again picked up his hand-written notebooks and it’s like newly finding a lost precious object.

There are tapes too, where he recorded his story but those I will need to find a way to clean up. For now I want to spend time with his notebooks where he scribed his childhood memories and reflected on the wisdom of his years.

Bees-on Stories

There is a tale that my grandfather wrote about an event in his early life. It tells the story of a 120-mile journey, largely on foot, from Birmingham to Ealing that he made with his father. I’ll replicate the story on these pages but I want to join my grandfather on that voyage. Some parts of the journey I have already visited and one day I would like to walk in his steps but for now I’ll share his words.

An introduction, in my grandfather’s own words, can be read here.