Bill Ryder-Jones

And so, the great day dawned when I finally went back to work... sort of!

My first work-related engagement in 6 weeks was to promote next week’s Liverpool Mental Health Festival on locally-based Internet radio station Melodic Distraction.

As ever, an immense amount of work has gone into putting this festival together. In fact, we’ve been working on it ever since last year’s festival finished. But, I want to go on record with my HUGE thanks to my colleagues Sarah and Nici who have been run ragged, handling all the admin, logistics and behind the scenes operations over these past few weeks while I’ve, quite literally, been sitting at home with my feet up! They are absolute legends!

The radio show also featured stalwart festival supporters, musicians Bill Ryder-Jones and Mersey Wylie, and writer Marjorie Morgan.

Bill (today’s Blip subject) has been the festival Patron for the past 3 years and was good enough to take time out from his current hectic touring, promotional and producing schedule to come along and take part. He truly is a lovely human being.

As are Mersey and Marj!

Mersey’s a fantastic soul singer and choir leader who’s been involved with our work for a few years now, and this year she’ll be running a vocal workshop as part of our ‘Feelgood Friday’ event next week, as well as performing with her band and being a panellist at our ‘Articipation: a Wellbeing Forum for the Arts & Creative Industries’ event next Saturday.

Marj is a wonderful playwright, poet, short-story writer, journalist and much more! This year she’s been the inspirational course tutor and mentor on our ‘TranScripts’ creative writing course for trans people (an anthology of the group’s writing will be launched as part of the festival).

She’s also currently very busy being a Writer in Residence for the Independents Liverpool Biennial as well as being actively involved in Black History Month, particularly in the #70NotOut Windrush Festival.

You can see pictures of all of us in the Extras... along with the show presenter, James. Thanks to Marj for taking the picture that I’m in!

You may be able to see the whole show here... should you have an hour to spare! www.facebook.com/MelodicDistraction/videos/234871287383290/ (But skip through the first 4 minutes unless you prefer complete silence as I sit there listening to my chosen track of the night which, incidentally, was ‘In a Station’ by The Band https://youtube.com/watch?v=nXhj45urx3Y )

You can see the festival brochure/programme at http://bit.ly/LMHF18_Programme As ever, all the events are free to attend!

Finally, here’s Bill’s current single, ‘And Then There’s You’ https://youtube.com/watch?v=6D2k-aEqZgk His new album, ‘Yawn’, will be out next month!