Not The Bored Room! Strategic Storytelling. Newsletter # 47.

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Great storytellers who continue to have a powerful influence on me are Herman Charles Bosman, Roald Dahl and Phillip Pullman, the latter of whom's trilogy His Dark Materials is the most captivating and wide-ranging literature I've ever had the pleasure to read. The storytelling world cannot further gain from the first two geniuses, but Mr Pullman, long may he live and write, has just published the first volume of The Book of Dust, La Belle Sauvage, which I shall purchase at the first available opportunity. Look out for this new treat in your local bookstore. 

What a pleasure it was to give a storytelling performance at Actuate’s For’Em event in Wesbank’s boardroom in Johannesburg last Wednesday afternoon. Thanks to Kevin Liebenberg and Kam Naidoo and the rest of the Actuate team. As employee engagement specialists, corporate communicators Actuate are doing a great job in blazing the storytelling in organisations trail in South Africa. Representatives from some of South Africa’s best-known businesses came to the For’Em to find out more, including ABSA, Aspen, Builders Warehouse, FNB, Liberty, MTN, Nedbank, Standard Bank, and Wesbank.

This time in Wonderful Words we begin a review of idiomatic expressions, such as a personal favourite, a ‘cock-and-bull story,’ a story, especially used as an excuse, which is obviously false, from the idea of old morality tales that often featured talking animals. Or ‘taking a busman’s holiday,’ a vacation spent doing what you do for a living; from the idea of a bus driver spending holiday time driving around.

In the seventh in the series of Schlumper-Dinckle stories about miscarriages and mismarriages in relationships, in Storytime the tone changes from customary irreverence to sadly sombre in The Fountain at Life’s Bitter End, featuring the fine and faithful couple Sterk Jaco and Santie Hartslief-Standfastig, from a farm somewhere in the platteland. For international readers, please forgive the use of some Afrikaans words, which help to ground the authenticity of the story in a South African motif.    

In the Tail, you’ll find more details regarding the 2018 Storytelling Skills for Business Wonder Workshop, and a link to the brochure for our In-house Storytelling Skills Wonder Workshop.

Enjoy.               

‘A loving heart is the truest wisdom.’  (Proverbially Dickensian)

Wonderful Words

The blurb to Geddes and Grosset’s The Illustrated Dictionary of Unfamiliar Words says the ‘… book concentrates on defining those words that the average person will often encounter but which may not be immediately familiar … a fantastic aid to general knowledge, an invaluable source for puzzle solvers, and can help increase and improve your vocabulary.’ We continue to put those claims to the test, with 10 examples beginning with ‘a’ from the Idiomatic Expressions part of the book’s Language Section.     

• Ace in the hole – A secret advantage, or some kind of resource kept until needed. It refers to a high-value card in stud poker which is kept face down while bets are made.
• Achilles Heel – A weakness that may not seem important but is actually mortal. The ancient Greek hero Achilles was made invulnerable by being dipped in the river Styx as a child. His mother held him by the heel, which was not dipped, and it was a wound there that killed him.
• Acid test – Any decisive test or ordeal; from the former use of nitric acid to test a metal for its gold content.
• Albatross around one’s neck – A constant burden or source of concern; from the poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 – 1834), in which a sailor who killed an albatross was made to wear the dead bird around his neck as a penance.
• All at sea – In a state of confusion or perplexity; from the idea that sailors who went out of sight of land in the time before navigational aids were invented would be completely lost.
• All over but (or bar) the shouting – Essentially finished or decided although still going on; from old English elections in which the voters expressed their preference by shouting for the candidate they wanted.
• All things to all men – Trying to please everybody, especially when being overly accommodating; from a Bible reference in which St Paul used this phrase of himself, meaning that he was adaptable in trying to spread the Christian message.
• And thereby hangs a tale – Often used to introduce a story about something that is seen or mentioned. The phrase comes from Shakespeare’s As You Like It.
• At a loose end – With nothing to do and somewhat bored; from crew members on old sailing ships being told to tidy up loose ends of ropes and rigging if they had nothing better to occupy them.
• At the end of one’s tether – So harassed or troubled that you are at the limit of your ability to cope; from a tethered horse being unable to reach more grass to eat because its rope is fully stretched.

 Storytime

The Fountain at Life's Bitter End

Rural farming folk in South Africa don’t have the same taste for personal ornamentation and other affectation as do their city counterparts. Burly husbands wear khaki, cotton and wool on their bodies and leather veldskoene on their feet, with a single gold wedding band on their fingers. Their wives dress simply and modestly, with a necklace and pendant around their slender necks. Yes, also rings on their fingers, but no bells on their toes.    

Jacobus Cornelius Johannes Marthinus Albertus Donovan Hartslief-Standvastig, ‘Sterk Jaco’ for short, was a man of large proportion and solid character. His beefy shoulders, developed from a lifetime of honest labour on his mixed farm, Totdiebittereindefontein, were so wide that Sterk Jaco could not walk straight through a doorway. Even when entering a stable or barn, in crossing the threshold from light to dark, Sterk Jaco turned askew. His arms and legs, derived from the same physical endeavours, were so strong and sturdy that once, in Sterk Jaco’s much younger days, he had won a prize of two dozen koeksusters, eighteen strips of game biltong, and five litres of mampoer at the local dorp’s annual boere fees, for hoisting and holding a live Afrikaner cattle calf for a full five minutes above his head. Oh, how the other farmers and their wives beamed in admiration, with a few scowling in envy, at the stunning performance, a record that has remained to the modern day. 

This impressive stature stood in sharp contrast to Sterk Jaco’s lovely and clever wife, the diminutive Santie, a cousin of the neighbouring farm’s family, Bokkie and Bessie Uitgeslape-Kabeljou. Santie was a sweet lady, as sweet as her marvellous melktert, Sterk Jaco’s favourite treat. She had never, not once, raised her voice in anger, nor slammed her hand in rage. Santie’s intelligence was put to good use on Totdiebittereindefontein, devising enterprising schemes that helped a goodly lot in sustaining the farm as the region’s top producer by far.

Santie kept Sterk Jaco as well-fed as the chickens, ducks and geese, and almost as well-fed as Slappies, their robust Boerboel, a handsome hound capable of encouraging the three Rhodesian Ridgebacks owned by the Uitgeslape-Kabeljous to scurry to safety should they ever stupidly trespass onto Totdiebittereinderfontein. 

An active man, Sterk Jaco was not one for long stories.

‘He’s got too many words,’ he remarked privately to Santie whenever a more jocular visitor came to the farm, such as the predikant on church duties, or an occasional Massey-Ferguson tractor mechanic from town. Santie invariably nodded her head in agreement. Seldom was Sterk Jaco wrong in the assessment of other men’s characters.

It did not bother Santie that there was no small talk in their voorkamer or on their stoep or in their bed. She was an avid reader of literature, and these works provided all the words required to sustain her spirit. Just having Sterk Jaco at her side or in the fields was all the close company that Santie needed. After all, her imagination was rich in the English company of Jane Austen and Jane Eyre, John Tolkien and Charles Dickens, and in the Afrikaans company of Anna Louw, Ingrid Jonker, Andre Brink, Uys Krige, and many other brilliant poets and novelists.

Santie’s dearest stories were Mark Twain’s and Breyten Breytenbach’s, though the most special place in and near her heart was reserved for AA Milne and Winnie-the-Pooh, whose stories she had enjoyed since childhood. Often during her quiet reading, Santie shared with Sterk Jan interesting and unusual ideas from the books. Her husband listened carefully, raised his eyebrows in interest, and smiled dryly, although seldom replied out loud.  

Sterk Jaco and Santie’s contented silence was enriched when listening to classical music, their favoured pastime. Oh, Brahms, Stravinsky, Mozart, Handel, Wagner, and all the other classicists so enraptured the residents of Totdiebittereindefontein that hours passed in the early evenings without a word being spoken. Oftentimes during their best-loved concertos, when Santie’s eyes were closed in contemplation, Sterk Jaco quietly put down his pipe and brandy, took up Santie’s dainty hand in his huge mitt, to waltz. The broad yellowwood floor planks creaked and strained, but Sterk Jaco knew never to lead Santie to the vulnerable corners of the room, where the boards were shaky and one of his big, heavy feet might break through the timber.

In all their sixty-eight years with each other, not an early morning passed when Sterk Jaco had not, following his farm inspections at dawn, brought Santie her cup of rooibos tea with milk and two sugars. Placing the hot mug on the bedside table, he always gave her a tender kiss with rough lips on her forehead.

For the Hartslief-Standvastigs, it hardly mattered anymore that their enduring union had brought no children. Though the couple had tried and tried again, they accepted this was God’s will. When it was clear that their time for possible parenting was over, they were sad and prayed every night to the Lord for a miracle, but none came. Yet they were gracious in their shared emptiness, with a renewed devotion to their dogs. The present-day Slappies was the couple’s seventh Boerboel from the same bloodline. Every Slappies was loved and cared for like parents love and care for a child. 

One winter’s morning Sterk Jaco did not bring Santie her tea, nor give her a kiss upon her brow. When she awoke with the brightening light, he was lying still at her side. She tried to awaken him, but he had peacefully died in the early hours. Santie held tight onto Sterk Jaco and lay quietly beside him. She did not sob, though a steady stream of tears soaked the sheet.

When Sterk Jaco was cold and there were no more tears left to cry, Santie went to the window and looked out across the fields. She held the silver pendant on the necklace around her neck to her bosom. Sterk Jaco had given it to her on their engagement, inscribed on both sides.

‘If there ever comes a time we can’t be together, keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever,’ was on the one side, and ‘If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you,’ was on the other.

“Slappies, Slappies,” Santie called through the window towards the kennel.

The dog scampered to the back door and wagged its tail.                                    

Tail

The Big Chief has saddled up his stallion Commanche and is cantering out onto the prairie, enthusiastic for the gathering of the upcoming year. Get on your horses, bring your tepees, and head for the Fairest Cape.  

2018 Storytelling Skills Wonder Workshop

Where: Cape Town. (Non-residential, venue to be advised)

When: Suppertime on Wednesday the 10th to lunchtime on Sunday the14th of October 2018. Up your storytelling skills for use in business and other organisations with four 4 days of workshop wonder. 

Facilitators: Peter Christie, Janis Mackay, Mli Zondi, Binnie Christie, Howard Drakes, Igno van Niekerk and Joanne Kaplan.

Cost: R14 800 for people from the private and public sectors, R7 400 for self-employed individuals and those from the non-profit sector. Two places available to deserving people at a price of R3 700.  

The seven facilitators are looking to choose a theme to underlie the different sessions at the Wonder Workshop. Any suggestions (such as leadership, change and transformation, diversity, sparkling speaking, etc) from Not The Bored Room readers will be most gratefully received. Please email your ideas to [email protected], or comment on this article.

How about a tribal ritual for your team, an In-house Storytelling Skills for Business Wonder Workshop? Choose your theme and we shall deliver. More details on the flyer, the link to which is:

https://bigchieftalkingbull.co.za/workshop/Storytelling_Wonder_Workshop-In-House.pdf

Does your company have a significant milestone to celebrate? Consider Living Legends, a celebratory storybook written by Big Chief Talking Bull. Email [email protected] and I’ll email you a brochure.      

“Eliza, you and I must get cracking, old lady,” remarked Piston to the steam engine, with the metal tinkling in response. 

 Big Chief Talking Bull a.k.a. Peter Christie.

Not the Bored Room! Strategic Storytelling. 

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PO Box 551, Strathavon, Sandton, 2031.

073-236-0305 mobile, 011-440-8560 office, 011-440-8563 fax.

[email protected]

www.bigchieftalkingbull.co.za

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