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Showing posts from August, 2019

Walk on

I'm on sabbatical currently but that hasn't stopped me fulfilling my biannual quota of BBC Radio Ulster Thought for the Day's. So yesterday morning I found myself sitting in the studio delivering the attached live version of my script. It must be said however the subsequent discussions, text traffic and social media interactions were probably more influenced by a brief aside regarding how much I spent for ticket to a U2 gig in the early 80s. What follows is a slightly longer version of the script, with the red text omitted for length and other reasons. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p07m192y “We make the road by walking.” This time last week I was preparing for the second day of a three day sponsored walk for Belfast Central Mission, marking their 130th Anniversary and to raise money for their new dementia care facility Copelands which will hopefully open next year. It wasn’t particularly long, around 40 miles, from Carrickfergus, where BCM previously had a

Stumbling onto a Story Worth Telling

One of the joys of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe is what my sister in law refers to as Fringe Roulette, where you just go to all sorts of random things. I spun the barrel today, having just got off the plane and went to a show on the basis that I was handed a flyer (by the person who turned out to be the writer and sole actress in the show, Susie Coreth), it was half price, it was taking place at a time that filled a gap before I had to be elsewhere, and it dealt with subjects that interest me for various reasons, not least dementia and the role of music in unlocking memories.  So at lunchtime today I joined a small audience in a converted shipping container in George Street (it is the fringe) to watch “Ivory Wings" and had the pleasure of watching an actor/writer on top form, painting a poignant picture of a woman with Alzheimer’s disease who had been a WW2 Air Transport Service pilot. It was a performance and script that avoided hackneyed mawkishness, but drew the audience