Tag: Flloydwith2Ells

The Return of Fairy Bessie

Amidst the covid chaos of the past few weeks, a moment of pure fun. I was invited to be a guest on the “Nana Funk’s Stocking Filler” show at the Unity Theatre, here in Liverpool last Friday. Nana is a local sensation, a burlesquing granny character created by the amazing clown performer Angie Waller. She has to be seen to be believed. I’ve seen, and I believe.

Nana Funk making snow angels Photo courtesy Unity Theatre, Liverpool

Angie asked me if I’d like to perform, as well as have a chat with her on stage, so I brought Fairy Bessie out of the suitcase, and Nana and Bessie had a good old reminisce about their younger glory days.

Fairy Bessie tries her hand at rapping. Photo courtesy Unity Theatre, Liverpool

You can watch the whole show now online, by renting the video from the Unity Theatre website. All proceeds for the artists involved.

Historic Event

It’s not often one gets the opportunity to be part of something historic, so I was pretty chuffed to be included in Threshold Festival X’s line-up yesterday. Sad that this was to be the final Threshold Festival though. This grass roots festival of music and visual arts has been running annually in Liverpool since 2011. It has been a huge success in promoting local artists and performers, as well as bringing extraordinary national performers to the city. For 3 nights and 2 days each year, every cafe, bar, gift shop and street corner in the Baltic Triangle would be jumping with excited audiences, enjoying their favourites as well as taking the newcomers to their hearts.

It’s no secret that Liverpool is a hotbed of musical talent, and Threshold ensured they were given a platform. But such is the nature of grass roots organisations, that they struggled to get funding and inevitably lost money. So having decided to finish up last year, and then having to postpone it to this year, they took the whole thing online and boy, did it go out with a bang!

You will find all the performances that were streamed online over the weekend are now available on Youtube.

Click here for the virtual art gallery.

Click here for Threshold Youtube Channel to watch all the events

Farewell Threshold, and thanks for all the love.

Reviews!

Some of my readers are sharing their response to “Sunsets & Kites”

I’ve just finished reading my copy of Flloyd Kennedy‘s wonderful collection!?? It captures her many facets and is so personal and thought-provoking.

Lucy Pickavance

With kindness, love and a gentleness almost forgotten, I found these words prising open my soul without my knowledge. I am left unsettled, ad my mind and heart are more exposed. There is a slowness in this book that is missing in the world. A kindness. A gentle beauty to the words and rhythms that allows the deeper meanings to move in the shadows. Visible but unseen… and I am changed.

This book is a delight. Make yourself a cup of tea, turn your phone off, sit in the comfy chair and allow yourself to drift gently with the tides for an hour or so. Don’t rush. Don’t look for meaning. Just go slowly. Thank you Flloyd.

Ted Gray

I found all the poems and stories entertaining and thought provoking and some of them I’ll go back and read again – and possibly again!

Mabel Macarthur

The book is available as paperback, or ebook, from Amazon and Bookshop.org.

I’ve just submitted the audiobook files to the publisher, awaiting review…

Stay safe!

Sunsets & Kites

There was a writing competition, sometimes back in the 1980s, out of the BBC, and a friend and I decided we would have a go. We set each other a modest challenge to get us going – she was to write a synopsis for a story, I was to write a synopsis for a radio play. In the event, she wrote nothing, and I came up with an idea for a musical radio play in which the characters were purely voices and musical instruments. My friend then challenged me to write a song for this musical play which included the words ‘sunsets’ and ‘kites’. The resulting song expresses the longing for all that would be lost if the nuclear war we all feared at the time ever happened.

That musical play is now a 15 minute script tucked away in a folder somewhere. The song has been sung many times at concerts, Open Mics, even recorded – you can find it on Spotify, Amazon Music and all the major streaming services.

My first poetry collection, also called ‘Sunsets & Kites’ covers a lot of ground, from before and after those heady days in the 1980s when the worst fate humanity thought it had to face was a nuclear winter. How times have changed. I’ve included some song lyrics and a couple of essays – and believe me, it’s not all strictly autobiographical…

Both print and eBook versions are available on Amazon (UK, USA and AU). I hope you like it!