Nicola Adam column: Once upon a time

Once upon a time, we have all disappeared into the depths of a story.
Nicola Adam, Group EditorNicola Adam, Group Editor
Nicola Adam, Group Editor

We have all been beguiled into the arms of a new family, a distant realm, a love story, murder plot or a personal drama that for once , we do not have to solve but merely observe.

We can be surprised, shocked, excited, in tears as we travel to explore worlds that don’t exist or those that do and we may only dream of visiting.

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We time travel, meeting generations past, or who never were but who may have been.

Exploration of the future – of what might, may, possibly or probably won’t be – is limited only by the imaginations of those who write words on a page, who spend hours staring at a sheet of paper, at a dusty typewriter, at a laptop screen.

Those who take their own experiences and share, those who have not experiences but instead create – these are worlds we now all have access to without travelling past our front door, past our television screen, past our electronic tablet, past our phone.

Stories are passed by love and time into lore.

Elizabeth Bennet could be our own sister, Paddington Bear our soulmate, James Bond our hero, Bridget Jones and Katniss Everdeen our solace and our equally flawed friends as we negotiate a real world beset by trial, tribulation, tragedy and joy.

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Our escape, our enjoyment, our moment to breathe created by accessing stories that began as words on a page.

Words bring families together and allow us to grow.

For many those first moments of magic are shared together over the brightly coloured pages of a bedtime story .

For many, it is huddled around a teacher at storytime.

But where did this story of stories start for most?

It started in the rapidly vanishing libraries, poring over dusty shelves , a portal to strange worlds and wisdom.

A world where money is no object to the world of imagination or the discovery of fact.

Where dreams do not discriminate.

Once upon a time.