Hello my friend,
Welcome to your sleep story.
My name is Stephen Dalton.
I'm an Irish storyteller.
And it's my great privilege.
To be the voice that you listen to.
As you go to sleep tonight.
Tonight you're going to meet a little girl.
Called Olive.
Olive loves to read.
And she loves to visit a very special library.
A library run by a man called Mr.
Plum.
And in the library.
Is a very special book.
It's a book.
That nobody has ever finished.
Maybe you're wondering why.
Keep listening to find out.
Also.
I'd love to know where you are in the world.
So why not write in the comments and tell me where you are.
And what time it is with you.
Let's do the relaxation session now.
Which will take a few minutes before tonight's sleep story.
I'm going to count down from 10 to 1.
Very slowly.
Does I do.
Allow yourself to let go.
More.
And more.
Feel the support.
Of the bed beneath you.
Or the floor.
Or whatever you lie upon tonight.
Beneath all of that.
Feel the support.
Of the Earth.
Our home.
Constant support.
And as you become aware of that grounding.
Calming support.
See if you can.
Let go a little more now.
Just.
.
.
Ease into this moment.
A little more now.
Nein.
Are safe.
Tonight.
Allow my voice.
To be a friend.
To be an anchor of safety.
Knows this.
My voice will never take you to anywhere unsafe.
It will only ever take you to safe.
Places.
Places of coziness and comfort.
Places where stories are told.
With a spirit of kindness.
And human understanding.
And allow that fact.
To enable you.
To just Be here.
And listen.
And move closer and closer to sleep.
Become aware of your body now.
Feel into your body.
Where are you holding tension?
Where do you perhaps feel pain?
Maybe it's in your feet?
Maybe in your lower legs your thighs,
Oops.
Your belly.
Your chest.
You're back.
Maybe your neck or shoulders.
Your arms.
Your hands.
Or maybe you're like me.
Do you hold tension in your face?
Or in the top of your head.
Wherever you're holding tension wherever you're feeling pain,
If you are.
See if becoming aware of it.
And help ease it a little.
Seven.
The day.
Is.
Whatever has been.
Has been.
Whatever will be.
Will be.
Whatever thoughts you might be having.
About the future or the past.
Know this.
Neither of those places exists.
What was it you have?
Is now.
Is this moment.
So choose to be kind to yourself in this moment.
And begin to let go.
If a sword arrives.
Don't face it.
Welcome it.
It is a part of being human.
See it for what it is.
A thought.
Then don't follow it.
Let it flows away.
Like leaves floating away on a moonlit river.
Were clouds passing by.
Through a starlit sky.
6.
Peace.
Lives within you.
I promise you it does.
It is always there.
It is always just.
Waiting to be found.
Wasting.
To be felt.
So see if you can find that peace tonight.
Ask yourself.
Where does it live within me?
Sometimes I think I find it in my chest.
Sometimes in my head.
When you find it.
It can have an immediate effect on your whole body.
Sometimes it can be found.
Through a simple,
Deep breath.
Let's take one now together.
Breathe in through your nose.
And out through your mouth.
Maybe you've found your peace.
Or maybe you're on the way to.
Don't force it.
It will come.
If it hasn't already.
Five.
This is your moment.
This is your time.
I love that fact to enable you.
To let go completely.
You have nowhere to be.
Nowhere to go.
Allow yourself to indulge in this moment.
Before.
Perhaps allow a little gratitude now.
Gratitude.
For the simple things.
With the ones who love you.
And who you love.
For the roof over your head tonight.
With the breaths in your body.
With the ability to lie here tonight.
And listen to a sleep story.
Begin to engage with your imagination now.
Begin to see.
A little girl named Oliver.
Who loves to read.
She reads everywhere.
Walking through her rainy town.
On the bus.
The train.
Wherever Olive is.
Is very nearby.
So be ready now to hear this charming story.
Of this charming little girl.
Checking in with your body one more time now.
Your body has worked hard for you today.
It's time to give it rest.
Completely letting go now.
As I tell you.
Tonight.
Sleep Story.
Most children.
If you ask them.
Will tell you that the very best thing in the world is sweets.
Olive would have told you.
Politely.
That's they.
Were wrong.
Olive was 8 years old.
And s'more for it.
With round spectacles.
And a plat that came undone by lunchtime.
Every single day of her life.
The thing Olive loved best in the world.
Was books.
Not just reading them,
Mind you.
Though she did a colossal amount of that.
Feel love.
The things themselves.
The smell of them.
Which is a bit like vanilla.
And a bit like.
.
.
Ocean.
The whisper a page makes when it turns.
The particular fat silence of a room.
With a thousand books in it.
Which is a silence.
Unlike any other silence on earth.
Because it is a silence.
Absolutely stuffed.
With things waiting to be said.
By her eighth birthday.
Olive had read four hundred and eleven books.
And she was halfway through the 412th.
I am not exaggerating.
There was a list.
Kept in a green notebook.
In handwriting that got smaller every year to save room.
She read everywhere,
Of course.
Proper readers always do.
You read it,
Breakfast?
With the book propped against the marmalade.
She read,
Walking to school.
Steering by the tops of the hedges.
And had only once walked into the post box.
Which she apologized to.
She read in the bath until the water went cold.
And under the covers by torchlight.
Until the torch went warm.
And once memorably.
At her cousin's birthday party.
In the cupboard under the stairs.
Right through the cake.
The candles.
And most of the conjurer.
And nearly all of those books had come from one place.
The town library.
Which stood at the end of the high street.
Behind two enormous chestnut trees.
And which was though hardly anyone in the town knew it.
Of the most quietly magical buildings.
In the entire world.
Now the librarian was a small,
Round man.
Cold.
Mr.
Plum.
And he was exactly the shape his name suggests.
Mr.
Plum had been the librarian.
For 41 years.
He wore a mustard-colored cardigan.
With sagging pockets.
And the pockets were always full of bookmarks.
Because Mr.
Plum believed that folding down the corner of a page was the sort of behavior that led sooner or later.
To the collapse of civilization.
Hespectacus hung on a little chain.
His shoes.
Made no sound at all.
And his voice.
After 41 years of saying.
Had gone soft all over,
Like a pear.
So that everything he said came out sounding like a secret.
Even.
Good morning.
Even.
Mind the steps.
The library itself was old.
And brown.
And wonderful.
It had tall windows.
And lumps with green glass shades.
And a real fireplace in the reading room.
Which Mr.
Plum lit every day from October to April.
And in front of the fireplace lay a large Ginger Cut.
Name.
Custard.
Who had wandered in during a rainstorm eleven years earlier.
Taking one look at the hearthrug.
And decided.
That is previous life.
Was over.
Olive came in every day after school.
Rain or shine.
Though in that town it was mostly rain.
It was the gentle,
Patient sort of rain.
That seems to have nowhere else to be.
And it tapped on the tall windows all afternoon.
While the fire fluttered.
And custard rumble.
And the books stood shoulder to shoulder on their shelves.
Keeping their thousand quiet secrets.
But there was one secret in that library.
Bigger than all the others put together.
It lives.
And the very Shove.
On the highest shelf in the reading room.
Above history.
And beyond geography.
There lay a single book.
On its own.
Wooden stand.
And it was unlike any other book in the building.
It was bound in leather.
Of the deepest midnight blue.
And scattered across the cover.
We're tiny.
Silver Stars.
That seemed if you looked at them sideways to be very slowly.
Coming up.
The way real stars do.
It had a title once.
Stumped on the spine in silver letters.
But over the years the letters had faded to a soft shimmer.
As if they had grown sleepy themselves.
And dough stuff.
And now.
Nobody alive could tell you what the book was called.
So.
The town called it what everybody had always called it.
The book.
Nobody has ever finished.
And here is the thing you must understand.
Because it is perfectly true.
Nobody had.
Or not.
Once.
Not in living.
Memory.
Every single person who had ever sat down with that book no matter how wide awake.
No matter how determined.
Had fallen fast asleep.
Not exactly.
Pay.
So is she The mayor had tried it,
One busy afternoon,
Sitting bolt upright on a hard chair,
With his chain of office on.
Page 32.
Fast asleep.
With his mouth open.
Snoring.
In B flat.
Colonel Cranberry who lived up on the hill.
And boasted that he had never once slept past five in the morning.
Drank nine cups of strong coffee.
And marched in to settle the matter for good.
Be.
Reach.
Page 31.
And a half.
Which remains the record.
Miss Heatherbridge.
The school teacher.
Who could stay awake through absolutely anything.
Tried it standing up.
They found her 20 minutes later in the armchair.
Though nobody.
Including Miss Peather Bridge.
Ever worked out how she got there.
And once.
Years ago.
A sea captain called.
Captain Soot.
That come to town.
A huge grey slab of a man.
Who had crossed three oceans.
And complained that he hadn't got a proper night's sleep in eleven years.
Mr.
Plum Judged by the fire with the book.
Page.
32.
The captain slept for 14 hours.
Woke up.
Beaming like a lighthouse.
And to this day.
Sends the library a thank you letter every Christmas all the way from Valparaiso.
The vicar had to go one summer.
Reading aloud to the Ladies Flower Committee.
To prove there was nothing to it.
By page 32.
The entire committee was asleep in a circle.
At Zandor.
And so was the vicar.
Standing up.
Still holding the book.
With his mouth open at the start of a word he never finished.
They let him get to the end of his nap.
Out of respect.
Even old Dr.
Bindel had given up prescribing anything else.
One chop.
He would say.
Rising is on his pad.
Taken at bedtime?
In a comfortable chair.
Nobody knew what was on page 33.
Some people said the pages went on forever.
Some said they were blank.
Some said the book simply hadn't decided yet.
When anyone asked Mr.
Plump He would only polish his spectacles.
And smile his small round smile.
Which was no answer at all.
And exactly the answer he intended.
As you can imagine.
Had sought about that book.
A very great deal.
Now,
One Friday evening in November.
Something wonderful happened.
Olive's granny had come to collect her at closing time.
But the rain outside had settled in so thoroughly.
Drumming on the chestnut trees.
And streaming down the tall windows.
That Mr.
Plum looked out at it.
And looked at the fire.
And looked at Granny.
And said in his soft pear voice,
You had better wait for a gap in it.
And since you're staying.
And here he paused.
And lowered his voice even further.
So that it was hardly a voice at all.
You may as well help me.
With thee.
Putting to bed.
Putting to bed of what?
Asked Olive.
Of the book.
Said Mr Plum.
As if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
Witch in that library.
It was.
And so.
While Granny settled in to the second-best armchair with her knitting.
Olive learned the library's great secret.
The one that Mr.
Plum had kept for forty-one years.
Which is this.
At night.
When the doors are locked.
And the lungs.
Are low.
Books?
Sleepy.
All of them.
Every.
Single.
One.
You could hear it.
Once you knew how to listen.
The whole reading room.
Was full of the smallest sounds.
The dictionaries were already snoring.
A deep Leathery,
Important sort of snore.
Full of long wait.
The poetry books hummed to themselves.
Very quietly.
In rhyme.
The Cookery Books Gave off a faint warm smell.
Of toast.
As they dozed.
And from the shelf marked ADVENTURE came a restless rustling.
Because adventure stories.
Mr Plum explained.
Are dreadful fidgets.
And must be tucked in firmly.
Where they kick their covers off in the night.
They went round together.
Shelf by shelf.
In the lamplight.
Mr.
Plum showed her how to close an atlas properly at bedtime.
Always on a calm page.
Never.
He whispered.
Leave an atlas open.
At the Atlantic in rough weather.
It won't sleep a wink.
And neither will Scandinavia.
He straightened the fairy tails.
Which liked to lean against each other.
You wound the almanac.
Olive.
Greatly daring,
Patted a large thesaurus.
Sighed contentedly.
In eleven synonyms at once.
And settled deeper into itself.
And the rain went on.
And the fire murmured.
And custard the cat.
Moved half an inch closer to it.
Rich for custard.
Most vigorous exercise.
And one.
By one.
The lumps were turned down.
And to the whole library.
Was a warm brown dusk.
Full of the tiny breathing.
Of books.
Then Mr.
Plum looked up at the very top shelf.
Where the midnight blue book lay under its faded silver stars.
Well?
He said softly,
There's one more to put to bed.
And I sing.
That tonight it had better be you who does it.
Mr.
Plum fetched the little wooden ladder.
Climbed it with great ceremony.
And brought the book down with both hands.
Where you might carry something asleep.
Up close.
It was heavier than it looked.
And warmer too.
The way a cat is warm when it has been lying in the sun.
The silver stars on the cover.
Really did seem to be coming up.
More of them.
Every time Olive blinks.
And when Mr.
Plum set it gently in her arms,
She felt the strangest loveliest thing.
A tiny sigh.
Like someone turning over under an eiderdown He settled her in the great dorm-chair by the fire.
The enormous ancient one.
So deep.
And so soft.
That's sitting in it.
Was really a matter of falling in a polite and organised way.
He took the tartan blanket over her knees.
Granny.
Without looking up from her knitting.
Said that this was all highly irregular.
And smiled while she said it.
Custard to the cut.
Sensing that something significant was happening in the best chair climbed up and arranged himself across Olive's feet.
Like a worm.
Ginger Draft Excluder.
Take your time.
Whispered Mr Plum.
It's not a book for racing.
And Olive opened the book nobody has ever finished.
And it opened with this sound.
Exactly like someone settling in to clean sheets.
And she began.
To read.
I cannot tell you everything that was in that book.
For reasons which will shortly become obvious.
But I can tell you how it began.
Because Olive remembered that part.
All her life.
It began.
Once there was a kingdom.
Where the night came in like warm water.
And nobody was ever in a hurry after four o'clock in the afternoon.
It was.
She found.
A book about the sleepiest kingdom in the world.
Nothing happened in it.
And it happened beautifully.
There were orchards outside the palace.
Where beds grew on trees.
And every autumn.
The whole town came out.
With baskets.
Gather the softest ones.
Which were always at the top.
There was a royal baker.
Who baked one enormous loaf each evening.
Time.
So that the smell of it drifted through every window in the town.
That's exactly bedtime.
There was a shepherd on the hill.
Who counted his sheep each night.
And always.
Always ended up counting himself.
Somewhere around 40.
And had to be carried home by the sheep.
Who knew the way.
And took it slowly.
There is a moon in that kingdom.
That the palace cooks rolled out each evening.
Like pale pastry.
And hung up while it was still warm.
There were lump lighters.
Who went round at dusk.
Putting the lumps out.
Instead of on.
Because in that kingdom.
The dark was the treat.
In the palace itself.
Thirty-one cats were kept on the royal payroll.
As official hot water bottles.
One for each bed.
And they took the work seriously.
Arriving at their posts at sundown.
And purring in shifts.
And through the middle of it all.
Run a slow brown river.
That had been going the same way for so long.
That it did it.
Entirely in its sleep.
Murmuring the same three soft words.
What?
Over.
And over.
Which nobody had ever quite made up.
And which everybody agreed.
We're probably.
.
.
There,
There,
There Olive turned the pages.
And here is the curious thing she noticed.
Each.
Was a little bit heavier than the one before.
Not hard to turn.
Just slower.
The paper grew thicker and softer.
Under her fingers.
More like flannels and paper.
And the print grew rounder and drowsier.
Until the letters stopped looking like letters at all and began to look like rows of small birds.
Settling along telephone wires for the night.
Laughing themselves up.
Tucking their heads away.
By once.
By one.
The fire bluttered.
The rain went on and on.
Patient as ever.
Granny's knitting needles had stopped clicking some pages ago.
And Granny was asleep in the second-best armchair.
With her wool in her lap.
Because Granny had not needed a magic book since roughly 1962.
Custard.
Was a warm weight on Olive's feet.
Rumbling like a small distant engine.
And somewhere in the brown dusk of the library.
A dictionary turned over in its sleep.
And muttered a very long word.
And settled again.
Olive Red on.
The kingdom was getting ready for bed now.
All of it at once.
The baker's loaf was cooling on itself.
The sheep were carrying the shepherd home.
The river said.
There.
Eh.
Eh.
Arise closed for a moment.
All by themselves.
And opened again The words had gone soft and golden at the edges.
And the page number at the bottom said 30.
Then there she went.
At the top of the next page.
And drowsy Silver Numbers 32.
And the last thing Olive read.
The very last thing.
Was this.
And so the whole kingdom.
From the king.
In his nightcap.
To the smallest mouse in the palace skirting board.
Lay itself down in the warm dark.
And the moon leaned over the town.
Like a lamp.
Over a page and everyone.
Everywhere.
Closed their eyes.
Mr.
Plum came over on his silent shoes and stood for a moment.
Smiling his s'more.
Round smile.
Olive was fast asleep in the great chair.
Her speck tickles,
Slightly crooked Replat,
Fully undone at last.
One hand still resting flat on page 32.
As if to keep her place.
And the book.
I promise you this is true.
Was already closing itself.
Slowly.
Gently.
The way a cat closes its eyes when it trusts you.
The pages leaned over.
One after another.
Until the midnight blue covers.
Came down without a sound And all the silver stars were out now.
Every.
Single.
And as it closed.
A thin silver ribbon.
Slid out from somewhere inside the spine.
Entirely of its own accord.
And laid itself neatly at page thirty-two.
For next time.
Because the book knew.
Even if the town didn't.
That it had never once been about getting to the end.
Some books are for finishing and one book.
In one library.
Behind two chestnut trees.
Is four exactly.
This.
Where is it going?
To sleep.
Which it considers.
And always has.
The very best part.
Of any story.
Mr Plum lifted it out from under Olive's hand.
Light is anything now.
And carried it up the little ladder.
And laid it on its stand on the top-shaft.
Where it gave one last sigh.
And went to sleep itself.
The last book in the library to drop off.
As always.
Like a good shepherd.
Then he banked the fire down low.
He straightened the tartan blanket over Olive's knees.
And fetched a second one for Granny.
He put out the last lamp but one.
And then since the rain showed no sign of a gap.
And since some knights arrange themselves better than any plan could.
Mr Plum sat down in his own chair by the hearth.
Took off his spectacles.
Folded his hands on his round front.
Joined them.
The library breathed around them.
Slow.
And deep.
A thousand books.
All dreaming at once.
The atlases,
Sailing calm seas.
The poetry humming.
The Fairy Tales.
Leaning on each other's shoulders.
Custard.
Rumbling on Olive's feet.
And the rain on the tall windows Saying what the river in the kingdom said.
There.
There,
There.
All night long.
Over the whole town.
Over every roof.
And every bit.
Over yours too.
And the last lump glows.
And the pages rest.
And everyone.
Everywhere.
Closes their eyes.
