Blog - Root Stories

Making meaning from the meaningless

Do you see animals in clouds, faces in the pattern of your wallpaper, or Jesus in the burn marks of your toast? You’re not alone. Pareidolia, the tendency to see shapes and faces in inanimate or abstract patterns is a pretty common. It’s probably …

Whose story is it, anyway?

When I was six, I got a skateboard for Christmas. It was red. And it was the best present ever. My best friend Barney came to visit and I dragged him to the airing cupboard where it lived. But when I hoisted myself up to the top, climbing the slatted shelves like a ladder, the…

Are we “story illiterate”?

My 11 year-old niece and 8 year-old nephew asked me what I like to watch. I presumed they meant on TV and said I like drama, documentaries, comedy …

And then I tailed off.

They looked confused. …

There are (at least) two sides to every story

There are two sides to every story. At least. I learned this early. Not because I was a philosophical or humanitarian wunderkind, but because I needed to prepare an alternative version of my own reality …

Christmas stories

The stories you tell yourself at Christmas, like those you tell at any time of year, are a function of your own history, your cultural and family training, and your own imagination. You have a choice about the stories you allow to define your ongoing reality. This is …

How stories connect

Go on, admit it. You love a bit of drama.

Of course, you’re above petty public squabbling and wouldn’t dream of making obscure, sadfish social media posts designed to elicit a “u ok, hun?” response. …

Where was I when …?

When I was a kid, I was convinced my father knew the way from anywhere to everywhere. He knew every road and short cut in London, and seemingly across the country. He drove with confidence, recognising the signs of building traffic …

Stories are messy

Life is messy. Sometimes it’s really fucking messy. Life isn’t a series of stories that dovetail neatly into each other to create a perfect “hero’s journey”. It’s a vast and endless jumble of highs, lows and tedium, with no clear outcome or resolution. The stories …

Smell your memory

My mother bought the house where she now lives, a concrete 1960s ex-council house that is nothing like the red-brick Victorian architecture she adores, because it has a walk in pantry. Like the one in her childhood home. On first viewing the house …

Creativity really screws you up.

Anna is a world-class expert at talking her way out of a creative idea before she’s even started. She can complete the entire creative process in her mind without ever releasing an idea onto paper or into the world. …

Memory and music

Still now, when I hear the familiar opening chorus of Bowie’s “Oh! You Pretty Things” I’m back on the cliff tops of the Welsh Island where, on my Sony Walkman, I first listened to a mix tape made for me by my friend Lizzie. I can smell the sea air and feel …

The citadel

“Stag beetles don’t like leylandii. It’s too acidic.”

But my mother is emphatic. She wants a log pile and she wants to use remains of the thirty foot Leyland cypresses …