Business and pleasure, that most glorious of mixes.
This weekend, Sabrina and I travelled to the Ribble Valley in Lancashire in the north of England for a couple of days promo and brainstorming regarding the Summer Days Festival in Clitheroe. Of course we managed to fit in a football match and a little wine tasting. Why not?
I love the Ribble Valley. My pal and festival partner, John Tyrrell introduced me to it several years ago whilst we were working on an unrelated festival which was ultimately doomed due to the worst rainfall that this country has ever had dumped on it. That was a record year for rain apparently. Although it didn’t affect our lives as much as did recent events affected the residents in the picturesque village of Whalley (pronounced Wall-E).
Whenever in the area we always pop into The Whalley Wine Shop to meet up with friends. It’s for our brainstorming sessions you understand (Yeah right says Sabrina). This weekend’s conversation, however was dominated by recent tragic events and we listened to heartbreaking stories of last Boxing Day, just two days after we were last there, when the town flooded and half of the villager’s homes were inundated with up to four feet of water. It was so very, very sad to hear these stories and my heart goes out to everybody affected.
On Sunday morning we had the pleasure of visiting a care home for people with learning and communication difficulties. John, Paul and the others live in a beautiful terraced Edwardian house; six friends with varying degrees of disability living together with their carers as one big family.
John is a superb drummer and a big 80s fan and he loves Spandau, especially John Keeble. I was asked if I wouldn’t mind popping round to say hello and see him drumming. I guess they couldn’t get John Keeble 😉 Nevertheless, he was proud that he had an audience and I was proud of him in return.
We had the most amazing time and it was touching to see how excited they were when I invited them to be our guests at the festival. Well, one has to return the hospitality.
The main reason for travelling to Lancashire was to attend The Grabby’s at The Grand Theatre in Clitheroe.
Now, The Grabby’s is like Britain’s Got Talent but involving four schools that are local to the area. I’m sure you know the drill; the winners of the earlier stages get to perform one last time and then an overall winner is chosen. This year’s Grabby’s saw raised money for Friends of Serenity, The Solomon Project and
Cancer Research.
There are many people involved in this project not least the tireless Steven Lancaster who has helped to make The Grand Clitheroe’s main community hub. All involved have given up their time to nurture, encourage and provide a platform or a stage in this case for young talents to show what they can do. Not only does this event give confidence to these young kids but it also gives us the chance to ‘discover’ the next Adele, the next Dynamo, the next Coldplay or the next
Isidora Duncan in little Tilly’s case.
I was very proud to be invited to this event to meet up and chat with these young artists. And I so enjoyed being able to offer them an appearance at Summer Days. The look on their faces was priceless.
Even though an overall winner is chosen, in my eyes they are all winners. They all followed their dream. And they all made it this far.
Best of luck to every one of them, that’s what I say.
Steve x
And here is an article from the Lancashire Telegraph:
CLICK HERE
