THE roads around Staveley and Ings were alive with stories, street theatre and foot-stomping music last weekend as Taffy and Chrissy Thomas's Storytelling Festival brought the crowds out.

The three-day Millennium event backed by South Lakeland District Council was deemed a huge success by the Dance Tales twosome.

In fact, Chrissy told me people we begging for more.

During my festival sortie roars of approval went-up as the Chipolatas juggled, drummed and generally brought a smile to the roving audiences faces.

Sammy 'Sticks' Chipolata blew the whistle on his colleague Jasper Chipolata.

As Tristan 'Fingers' Chipolata pranced around with his squeezebox on the makeshift stage outside Wilf's Cafe, Sammy said Jasper "had dropped everything to become a juggler."

And later the trio had the village hall bouncing, staging a bursting-at-the-seams ceilidh, augmented by a bass and fiddle player.

Hugh Lupton conveyed a few storytelling tips to those gathered in the village hall's institute.

Among the Norfolk-based yarn-spinner's repertoire lie a few Russian folk tales handed down by his granny's brother - Hugh's great Uncle, Arthur Ransome.

The famous author spent a lot of time in Russia, married Trotsky's secretary and was according to Hugh caught up in the revolution: "Apparently he was the only British journalist trusted by the Bolsheviks and played chess with the likes of Lenin.

"He was a big influence of mine, and wrote Old Peter's Russian Tales.

If one book turned me onto storytelling that was it.

Written prior to his Swallows and Amazons days."

Festival fever continued: Lisa Austin's young Fosbrooks fiddlers were on hand and Werca's Folk, a wickedly-wonderful women's folk choir, made the pilgrimage from Northumberland, to entertain.

Among the many other lively acts on parade were Panic Attack, comedian Bernard Wrigley, Ben Haggerty, the compelling Tuup and Cumbria's very own, man of many words, Taffy T.

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