Self Distract: A story, a story, a fanciful tale

Hand on heart, I know for absolute certain that this is a quote: “it’s only a story, a story, a fanciful tale.” And I know for nearly absolute certain that it’s a line from an Alan Plater script. But which one, I do not know. I can even hear how it should be said, how it was said in whatever it was, I can read that line and hear the intended rhythms of it. But then you usually can with Alan because his writing is him and the only difference if you happened to know him was that you’d see the same patterns in real-life speech as across his hundreds of written work. I think we all have these rhythms, I think it’s called a voice, and I know that none of this is what I set out to talk to you about. But a story, a story, a fanciful tale, that line has been in my head at times for about a month now. Because I was commissioned to go visit a book group, learn what they like and don’t like in a story, and then write one for them. I delivered that story at the end of last week and this week I’ve…