Audio version of this “Does Your Chicken Have a Pépie” story now available as part of the extended content feature and on the Tell Me a Story page.
Let me read you this story here or on the linked page www.elliekennard.ca/chicken-pepie using the audio player while you browse the images, or you can subscribe to the podcasts as I will be recording my stories in that form.
Enjoy!
…I leaned on the fence feeling utterly defeated. The factory hum of bees in the Linden blossoms, the loudest interruption of the peaceful afternoon, went completely unnoticed. I wasn’t taking in any of the pastoral beauty spread out before me, as I watched my little flock of hens in the yard, lying in the shade …
Listen
“Telling Stories”, read by the author (Also linked on the “Tell Me A Story” Page)
How Telling?
Now, how do you read the title of this story? Where are you to put the emphasis? Is it telling stories (in the sense of revealing) or telling stories? A little bit of both? Well I will let you, dear reader judge for yourself.
First of all, how did I start my story telling? And when? Well probably not that young (not as young as this photo shows), to be honest, but I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t read – my mother said I was 4 when I learned – and I always enjoyed writing. When I started to tell stories, though, was not long after the time I refer to in my Mirages post. As I mentioned, my parents separated and then divorced. And I began to make up stories.
Ellie – All ready to start writing
Making up stories
When you’re young, or at least when I was young it’s not easy to understand what’s going on in your life when your parents are no longer living together. Continue reading →
Listen
“Mirages”, read by the author (Also linked on the “Tell Me A Story” Page)
Cairn Island, as if strangely reversed, appears to rise like a mirage of land far out in the shimmering water of the Saint Lawrence river. I stand on the dock and find myself transported back to the last time I looked out on that scene. I was about 6 years old.
Cairn Island rose like a strangely reversed mirage, from the shimmering waters of the Saint Lawrence River- Ellie Kennard 2016
We were staying with our grandparents at their beautiful, grand riverside house while my parents were away on a trip. The afternoon was hot and the water in the river had brought a refreshing relief when we children had played in it. I had gone in for lunch but was almost too excited to eat. After continual (and no doubt annoying) begging and pleading by us, my young uncles had finally agreed to take my brother and me in their boat over to explore Cairn Island. It was just far enough away that we couldn’t really see what was on it, except for a shape like a tipi that jutted up mysteriously and so we had invented all kinds of tales about what it was and who had built it there. We could tell it was not a natural phenomenon, it must have been put there for a reason, but by whom?. My uncles who were not much older than we, perhaps 15 or 16 years old at the time, wouldn’t say anything about it except that we ‘would see’ when eventually we were permitted to go there with them. It was too far to swim and so we had no choice but to pester them to take us.
I was a little girl and that was enough to make me irritating to those two grown boys. Worse than that, I had really got myself into their bad books only that morning as I had gone into their room uninvited. (As I was never invited that was the only way to get in there.) Once inside I had discovered the stack of records that were beside their record player and had taken a few out to look at them. I had also opened my uncle’s saxophone case and peeked inside. My timing had not been good and they had discovered me in the act and none too kindly thrown me out with serious threats as to what they would do to me if they ever caught me in there again. What a way to treat a budding music enthusiast!
