We made masks in the community garden from cereal packets, petals, leaves, sticks, herbs and old egg boxes.

Such great teamwork! And what joyful and unique results:

I told the story of the Thief and the Mask – the extraordinary case of a man becoming his mask.

An old Chinese tale, it involves a thief who is forced to act like a handsome, kind, honest, intelligent man because of a mask, only to find that after a year of pretence he has become just such a man.

The story made me think of the storyteller mask I wear each time I sit in the lovely warm circle of responsive open minds and hearts, able to lose the fear of my story not being enough, of not connecting with anyone… one of the many strange and wonderful ways in which storytelling transforms, providing us with a way of sharing a part of ourselves and of being together; a magical mask to grow beneath and beyond.