Once upon a time, a long time ago now, unless you are a time traveller, or an Ancient Oak Tree in Sherwood Forest.  

A little boy was singing hymns in his school's morning assembly and every one said 

"What a Lovely Voice". 

It was Christmas time and they needed some singers 

".....what can I give him poor as I am if I were a Sheppard I would give a lamb..." 

So the little boy took his first step 'on the boards' and theatre and performance became to him what normal mortals called soul. 

Some years later, during another assembly, the Deputy Head Teacher, of the school, indicated to the other three hundred, or so, children that they should be quiet, and the little boy, who had now grown up, a little bit, was left singing all alone.... 

"...purpose out as year succeeds to year..." 

and everyone said 

"What a Lovely Voice". 

So he joined the choir and got five shillings a quarter, until he was promoted to fifteen shillings a quarter, and he got three shillings for a wedding, and there were lots of weddings. So you could say, almost,  that he opened his mouth and became a professional. They sent him to the ancient and magnificent Cathedral in the great city of the land, where Monarchs, Heroes, Famous Persons and Poets were laid to the rest.

The years rolled on and he became a true professional and performed for Lords and Ladies, and on the television, and in many different lands. 

He fell in love with a fairy, and spent happy years with her, he asked her to marry him,  but she said  

"it is impossible, unless I become a human, and I am too young for that", 

She flew away and returned, she flew away and returned and then she was gone, and the atmosphere in his life went silent and empty, and when he realised that she had truly gone his heart broke with the sound of a Grand Piano falling of a lorry.  

The fairy sounds cruel but the fairy knew a greater good and a deeper magic. She knew that he could never write real love songs unless he had had his heart broken. He did not know that of course and it took him thirty years to understand. 

That is how the wicked witch came and over took his life, with poisoned thoughts and anger, she flew on her broom stick about his life brushing away all the good, and nice, people who had been his friends.  Over some years she weaved a wicked, dark and cunning spell, which contained a long fuse. The fuse burned and burned and finally, when the witch had gone right to the other side of the world, the spell exploded, our hero was blown away by the blast, he was disorientated and he ran to the hills for safety, but there was no safety, and finally, when the dust had settled, he found that the witch had used the spell to steal away his voice.  It turned him almost mad and he ran from the hills deep into the mountains, above the fog line and into the cold snows, his mind was blank and his life was empty and it took years for him to understand his real quest should be to search for his lost voice.

He met many strangers, in those mountains, who spoke with strange tongues but somehow there was communication. The boy had matured but was living as a house boy, an unpaid servant. He worked from before dawn until late into the night caring for children and cleaning the house. In the cracks of his wall to wall schedule  he would dream of having lots of money and he would work on fantasy businesses which promised, but did not deliver the reward.

Suddenly, one blustery autumn day,  the person, who works the buttons, which control the universe, remembered the boy, and looked on the CCTV monitors, 

"he has suffered, I hope, enough, to write some real love songs now" 

said the person in charge of the universe to themselves. A strong surge of plasma partials beamed up from the earth, they hit the boy and things began to change for the hero of our story. 

One day a Knight on a shiny, fancy, mountain bike arrived and said 

"You need this more than I do" 

and the Knight throw our hero a guitar case with a guitar in it. At first our hero did not know what to make of it, he had some memory, somewhere in a dusty corridor in his skull, but it took him several months to work out exactly what it was. So our hero began to heal, and so the unhappy times began to pass, and so the universe began to return what it had taken, and to give more to our hero than he had had before.

Then a person spoke of the King, our hero had forgotten all about the King, but, once reminded, he remembered singing to the Queen's Mother, when he was a child, in the Grand Cathedral, and he remembered signing an autograph for that Queen Mother's Great Granddaughter, after a show, many years after that. Our hero, let us call him Acorn, suddenly remembered his dream, his true dream, not to have lots of money, but to find people who wanted to hear him sing and to sing with the King. 

How could this now be possible he had lost his voice. 

Rage over took him, emotion was high, bitterness surrounded him how could he break from the prison of the life he had been sucked into. He was a house boy living to the beat of other peoples dreams. The world was full of the steel cables of responsibility and was morally bound by the roots grown from loving parents so many years before. 

He run up and down the mountain, because there is power in a dream, a dream that belongs to you, because the fire of it makes you glow.  So it was  that, one fine spring morning, after an entire night of wandering and searching, he came across a small waterfall, it had be frozen and captured by the wicked witch of winter. Deep in his heart he found an empathy for the frozen, captured, imprisoned drops of water.  He knew the he and the waterfall were one and that they must both be free. 

The warmth of the sun was shining on the ice of the frozen waterfall. It was just there, it was just there, in the snow, in the winter you could not have seen it, but the spring was lifting it out of the snow. It was his voice. It was a little cold, but it still worked, persevered by the cold and the ice. 

Like a deranged Maria Von Trapp he ran down the mountainside, through spring meadows, shouting and singing with all the air his lungs could expel. 

Immediately Acorn wrote a letter to the Kings Personal Secretary 

'Dear Personal Secretary to the King, it has long been my dream to perform in a concert with his Royal Highness, I would most humbly implore you to make representations to his Majesty, on my behalf, to turn my dream into a reality. Your humble servant Acorn, formerly of South London'. 

The King's Personal Secretary wrote back and said 

"It is his Majesty's understanding that you are indeed Acorn, the little boy from the South London Primary School, of whom everybody said 'what a lovely voice has that young boy'.  If this is truly the case, and you are indeed Acorn, formally of South London, his Majesty will issue a Royal Warrant and Decree that you, Acorn, formally of South London, will perform a concert with his Royal Highness this very night."

The theatre was in the far north of the country, it was old with ornate fixtures and fittings, and a howling gale which hit the back of any performer standing centre stage. The King was all smiles, the conversation light and easy which helped to put Acorn at his ease. The rehearsal was great, the show was a little less so, but it was a success and the crowd all said 

"What a Lovely Voice".

Then King said to Acorn

"Kneel before me, on this stage, and before this audience assembled here" 

and the king raised his, 'Signature Model', 'Martin Guitar' and dubbed Acorn on the shoulders with it, first the right and then the left, and then in a voice, which sounded like one hundred Pavaroti's, the King said 

"A-rise 'Sir Almond of the Greenway',  for the Acorn, formally of South London,  has truly grown into a hard, but delicious nut."

When the crowd had stopped cheering the King said

"Now go forth and sing and write songs and bring some happiness to those you meet, wherever you may meet them................."

And low the fairy appeared, and she was as she had been thirty years before, and she winked, and her eye was caught in the spotlight and it sparkled, and she said 

"You can write a good love song now and you can sing and feel what the people feel, because you have felt what many of them have felt, and more than some others have felt and so now you know..........."

....and he did....