Groupthink: Storytellers

We write stuff. That’s what we do. We write and we read and we discuss stuff. That’s what Groupthink is. This week though we decided to go a different route. The route of our forepeeps. We wanted to get our olden timey on and do the whole “sittin’” by the fire telling tales thang”, and so we did. But HAL style.

Instead of a camp fire we sat around a table laden with cheep booze, getting hammered and chain smoking cigarettes of questionable authenticity. Yup, twenty people crowded around the tables at Crocus telling true tales. Real live stories! None of that fiction crap the kids are so crazy about these days. So sit back and enjoy these recordings from our evening of storytelling.

Oh, and just when you thought it couldn’t get any sweeter HAL is putting together the first ever Storytelling Event in Shanghai this coming October! We are looking for Storytellers, Musicians of all kinds along with Artists, illustrators, painters  and digital artists to join HAL in putting together an event that combines all these elements in a celebration of storytelling. Interested in joining? Email us at butler@haliterature.com

Click on the links below to listen to Groupthink live storytelling!

W.M.Butler: Extra Cracky KFC

David Hampson: Declare Your Pork Pies

Kitty Harlow: Mum, Dad, an Arabian Prince and an unspecified amount of Cocaine (We withhold, for now, from you this brilliant piece, it will instead be performed live in Shanghai soon by beautiful Kitty, stand by for updates on HAL events).

Diary of a Wolf

by David Hampson

March 15 2015 – Monday,

7.24am

I awake with a start. My head is pouring with sweat from wearing my helmet in bed. This stops the kelpies putting little electrodes, probes or some other electronic hardware in my brain; eves-drop on my thoughts. I´d slept for 3 hours, but it seemed I was out a lot longer than that. Maybe someone is fucking with my clock…or with time? I check the talcum powder spread around the floor for footprints. Nothing. As most people know the kelpies can levitate above the floor, but the talcum powder would catch any dogs, dingos or hyenas who sniffed their way into the apartment, looking for fresh meat.

I check under the bed, all clear. I remove the helmet and unzip my sleeping leathers, then walk to the bathroom. Continue reading…

Willy and His Two Friends

A sex education tale
by David Hampson

Willy had 2 friends, bolliker and balliker. Willy always wondered why they looked so similar and he looked so different, so strange. They would tease him when he inexplicably grew large and then shrunk. And when it was cold they would snuggle together leaving Willy all alone. They shared the same space inside the 95% polyester tent. Worse was when bolliker and balliker made him vomit when he didn’t want to, and sometimes in very embarrassing situations, getting the tent all wet. Sometimes he would be pushed into the water chute, with bolliker and balliker making him vomit, which was strange because he never ate anything.

One particularly busy day, after bolliker and balliker had made him vomit 2 times already, and then vomit once again into the tight pink swimming suit that the man in the sky made him wear, Willy and bolliker and balliker were taken for a ride across town. They went into a dark place that smelt a bit fishy. Suddenly the tent came off and balliker and bolliker were getting slapped by a wooden paddle, Willy started laughing at his little friends jiggling around, so much that he vomited with all the excitement! But this time he didn’t mind.