RINGWOOD AUGUST 21st

What an evening! First credit to Suzanne, for an amazing and enlivening performance as the Mistress of Ceremonies! Wit, irony and a sparkly dress! Plus all the effort that went into providing the inspirational clippings, and the subtly judged concatenation of the narrative offerings!

Glenys, whose life seems to be full of things that make magnificent, well-shaped stories [or maybe it's the way she tells 'em], told us about the Month of Whole and Half - the agreement she made with her son on their celebratory cruise to Fiji to spend a month together in a few years' time, in 2012 in fact, when, for the weeks between his birthday and hers, he would be exactly half her age - and how, walking in Nepal, they both became themselves.

Anne-Marie, a visitor from Northampton [and let's hope she comes back!], told us with vivid mime and facial gestures how Anansi got his Box of Stories from the Sky-God. Laura told us about the Old Lady whose prayers for a daughter were answered in the form of a kleptomaniac cooking-pot, who got her comedownance in the end. Graham blended gardening duty with a neighbourly encounter [though whether Graham will feel himself forced to move away by an influx of UKIP supporters is another story for another day]. Mike took his cue from a 70-year-old Australian's successful Channel-swim to remind us of Hero and Leander, while Rapahel went to China for his story of two brothers, a ploughing dog, some bamboo-trees and some winter-melons, in which the dog-poo-spattered nasty brother is eventually pushed off a mountain inside a winter-melon by some religiously challenged monkeys [you needed to be there!]

Jill deployed an excellent Welsh accent to tell us of the roadside dangers in Powys [foxes, wolves, bears, all prepared to eat little old ladies in their walking-boots] and how the lack of public transport can be overcome by the use of a large specimen of Cucurbita pepo cinderellensis [pumpkin to you], provided you put on your seat-belt properly.

Bevin Magama not only told the tale of Hare and Baboon [which you can find on his website] but also told how he was told it, and the moral resided not so much in the story as in his and our response to it - which was a timely reminder that stories are what we make of them. And after he'd told, he was joined by Ceri Ivins for a song with mbira accompaniment.

In conclusion, to remind us that war is not a modern invention, Maddie took us back to the opening of the Thirteenth Book of the Iliad, where Poseidon defies his brother Zeus and, taking upon himself the form of Calchas the Seer, gives divine strength and fortitude to Ajax the Great and Ajax the Less, and encourages the other Greeks to resist the fierce onslaught of Hector and the Trojans.