INSPIRATION EXCHANGE
Hillsborough
Library
HillsFest
9 July 2016
11.45am
Once I’m set
up, before the Exchange opens, I half jokingly ask Sue, who works in here, if
it’s okay to talk in this bit of the library? I don’t have to be quiet, do I?
It’s pretty lame and predictable even as a half joke but she humours me and
explains that down this end of the library – away from the computers – it’s
fine to talk. They have book groups who meet here, and people often have a
coffee and a chat.
Sue makes me a
cup of tea.
11.55
Ten minutes
later this seems a moot point –
(does ‘moot
point’ mean what I think it means? It’s one of those phrases that I use because
I like the sound of it and I think I know what it means, but if I had to
explain its meaning to someone, what would I say? It means “pointless point”?)
- anyway, it
seems a moot point because the soundcheck on the main stage starts and all
anyone in the library can hear is Michael Jackson.
12.00pm
Then, exactly
five minutes later, as the Inspiration Exchange opens, the PA is turned off,
and the library is very quiet. It’s the first day of HillsFest, in Hillsborough
Park, and it has been raining all morning. I had been thinking the rain would
drive people indoors, but if they haven’t even ventured out to the park, then
there’s no-one to come inside, out of the rain. The forecast is better for
tomorrow. I’m not here tomorrow.
12.05
A man wants to
know if the children’s library is open. It is, it’s just that the door needs a
bit more of a push.
12.07
Someone is outside
somewhere, bouncing a ball against the library wall, or knocking tent pegs in.
12.08
The music is
back on, but not loud enough to be identifiable.
I wonder if I’m
allowed to get something to read? We are in a library after all. And I did make
up the rules of the Inspiration Exchange.
I’ve thought
this before during the quiet bit at the start of an Exchange – I’m writing
these notes waiting to be interrupted.
12.14
Reading a book
would be more appropriate than looking at my phone, wouldn’t it?
A guy has come
in looking for more information about the festival. I’m going to get him.
I swap AIR
CRASH INVESTIGATION
For MIND
MAPPING
F. tells me
that he has severe dyslexia. He’s good at starting things, but completing them
is difficult. He left school “with nothing” – as there was no support for, or
even recognition of, his condition. They tried to make him order his thoughts
in a way that just wasn’t natural to him.
A chance
encounter with a psychologist in a pub lead to a conversation in which the
psychologist explained the idea of Mind Mapping to him – a way of cataloguing your
thoughts in a much less linear way than a list. (I realise I recognise this as
spider-diagrams). Such a simple thing once you know it. But it transformed F.’s
thinking. He went to college and came away with five A levels.
F. asks me to
write the title card, and we carry on talking, about the writing he does now,
and the ideas he’s developing with an old friend – a unique collaboration based
on how long they’ve known each other. Friends since school.
Outside the
rain has stopped. We thank each other and say goodbye, as a family arrive.
I swap “YOU’RE
GOING THE WRONG WAY!” “I KNOW!”
For TEN POUND
POM
I think each
time I present the Exchange, I learn something new. Fifty years ago, Australia needed
more young men to work. If you were a young man in England, the Australian
Government would pay for your travel if you would come over and work for at
least two years. You just had to pay ten pounds (and the four weeks of your
life that the boat journey took). But if you didn’t stay two years you had to
pay your boat fare back to get home.
The grandfather
who tells me this (who looks nowhere near his 76 years) is with his family; I
guess wife, daughter and grandson. He was one of these Ten Pound Poms. He had
moved around, living in a variety of shared houses. One evening he was cooking
in the kitchen, when two Aussies came in and started having a go at a German
guy for borrowing/stealing their food from the fridge. He’s not a fighter but a
sense of fairness meant he felt that he had to step in and say, there’s two of
you, one of him, so if this is a fight, you’re fighting me as well. The two
Aussies backed off.
A few nights
later and he’s in a bar, and steps in to stop another guy from shouting at a
girl he knows from one of the houses he’s shared. He’s not a fighter, but the
guy asks him to step outside (it’s fifty years ago, remember), so he does,
thinking, basically, why do I keep doing this?
Sleeves are
rolled up in the street, and then there’s a hand on his shoulder.
(German accent)
“I’ll take this for you.”
The German guy
from the kitchen is there, and steps in to have the fight for him, by way of
thank you.
And it’s a proper
fight. The police turn up, and arrest the two guys fighting and take them away
to the station.
The next day
the German is back at the house.
“Hey, are you
okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine.
They just put us in a cell for the night.”
“Thanks so much
for stepping in. I really appreciate it.”
“No problem.
You did it for me. Ow.”
“Are you okay?”
“Well, he did
break three of my ribs in the fight.”
Sitting in
Hillsborough Library fifty years later, we all laugh. Amazing. That guy! And I’m
waiting for “and we’re still friends today!”, but instead the grandad’s
daughter says:
“And he never
saw him again!”
We talk about stories.
The grandson says he would like to write a book of his grandfather’s stories.
Do it, I say. Do it. Start recording them as soon as you can.
I swap THE
BROKEN TAXI METER
For CREAM TEA
TEAM
A story about
attention to detail and about a particular act of friendship.
In telling this
story, we realise that B. has also told us another story, which we call GIVE AN
OWL A DOVE which rewrites the old adage about giving a man fish or a fishing
boat, to become something like:
Give an owl a rat and it can eat for a meal, give an owl a dove and it can kill it and use if for bait and eat rats for a week.
I swap LETTING
GIRLS BE
For THE
EMERGENCY EXIT SEAT
A story about
coincidence and seizing the moment. R. tells us about travelling across India, flying
from Delhi, and, through a safety briefing because they are all next to the Emergency
Exit, getting to talk to the people sitting next to her. Once landed at
Varanasi she needs to get to Allahabad – but doesn’t know how she will get
there. She knows though that one of her neighbours was heading to Varanasi,
too. So she summons her courage and asks a stranger for help – could she get a
lift?
Of course she
can, no problem. And once in the car they discover that not only can they (the
guy and his driver) take her to the street of her accommodation, as it is so
close to where he’s staying, he knows the friends-of-friends she’s planning on
hooking up with later in the week – in fact he’s staying with them!
R. says these
events re-inspired her faith in talking to other people.
I get a bonus
title card OUR OPPORTUNITIES LIMIT US
I swap DO I
DRAW THE ACTORS OR DO I DRAW WHAT I SAW?
For STORY CUBES
Which is a
story about how the limitless possibilities presented by a game of story cubes can
actually be very intimidating to a particular sort of thinker or researcher.
I swap 01369
870212
For HEADLESS
SANTA
Which is a
story about, well, a headless Santa, sprawled in the back yard of a pub, arms
open wide as if to be embraced, or crucified. A. says she would see it regularly
after getting off the tram on her way home from work. It was there for two
weeks, moving around the back yard in a sort of daily time-lapse, and also
niggling away at her thoughts. What was it doing there? Who had cut its/his
head off?
Eventually a
neighbouring business (a car valeting company?) stood him up next to the fence
and gave him an advertising sign to hold. But not a head.
I swap TAKING
AWAY THE SCAFFOLDING
For A TIN BOX
OF CURLERS
A story about
being fascinated with your (sterner) Grandmother’s tin box of hair curlers, and
whilst being intimidated by her as a girl, also being fascinated by the
meticulous way she would put those curlers into her hair. A story about growing
up, and looking back, and realising that the curlers were part of this woman’s
warpaint when she was younger; she had inherited a butcher’s shop that she had
then effectively run on her own, from lugging the carcasses in, to dealing with
customers. Looking right was part of the armour that allowed this young woman
to work well in that world. And as she had grown older, that ritual had
retained its importance. A story about looking back and realising,
retrospectively, what an inspiration your (sterner) grandmother was.
I swap THE
TURNINGS THE BUS DOESN’T TAKE
For THE WILD
CEILIDH
A family of
five squeezed into a car driving up to Scotland on holiday.
A long journey.
Two sisters and
a brother squeezed onto the back seat.
Mum complaining
about the distance.
And then the car
crests a hill, and the road leads down to a loch.
It is
beautiful.
It feels like
an enchanted place.
They find where
they are staying.
One night there
is a ceilidh. It is wild.
The older daughter
has never seen dancing like it.
There is a man
there – unruly dark curly hair, piercing blue eyes. He clearly fancies the mum.
He asks her to dance.
That night the
daughter dreams about the stranger, dreams about him dancing with her mum.
Exciting but frightening.
Somewhere in
Scotland that loch is still there, mist lying on the water. And the hall where
the ceilidh took place is still there, too.
I swap STOPPING
PEOPLE DREAMING
For…
A story about
realising that, sitting blindfolded in a room in a festival, you are not just
listening to a story, you are active in it, participating. Who knew that human
voices and a guitar could provide something so… limitless?
We say goodbye.
And then I realise that he hasn’t named his story. So I call it ROOM.
Outside it
sunny. The rain is evaporating from the paths. The library is closing. As the
staff close the blinds and switch the self-scan machines off, I pack the Exchange
away, and head outside. There’s a band playing.
