There was more sadness last week when we learned of the death of our columnist and Seaside FM presenter Andrea Burn at the age of just 62.
Late last year she had been told that the kidney cancer she had suff ered 15 years ago had returned, and she died, with her husband Richard by her side, at Dove House Hospice on January 25. Cancer is a cruel, cruel disease, and my heart goes out to Richard and all of Andrea’s family and friends.
She was one of our own, and the Gazette and Seaside FM will certainly be honouring her memory in the coming weeks by bringing back the short story competition she was so passionate about.
So, please keep a lookout for this as we approach spring and Easter – I’d love it if as many people could participate as possible so we spark a wave of creativity across the region and have a wealth of entries to choose from. It would be a great tribute – the best we could pay to such a lovely, positive lady.
It was great to meet people at Withernsea Methodist Church last week as I dropped in to its monthly Food, Friendship and Fun session and gave a performance of my particular brand of folk singing (as I said last week, if you’re not into mournful maritime ballads, you dodged a major bullet).
Our writer Tim Nuttall has written a great piece about the event, and I’ve even allowed some of his pictures to go in, perhaps against my better judgment. The big picture is only there because I thought it was superbly well composed, with the big pictures of the Pier Towers in the background at the church’s spacious Community Room.
It was great to get back performing in front of an audience, even if it was on my own, but as I told Tim in the feature, you’ve got to push yourself out of your comfort zone sometimes. It’s very, very easy to not do the thing that makes you nervous. I will never, ever, not be nervous before singing live, and I’ve accepted that that’s how it will be. Perhaps if you’re not nervous, you get too relaxed and complacency sets in.
But it was great to make a few more connections – I might have bagged myself a performance slot at a Withernsea Ladies’ Choir concert one day, and thanks to organiser Gordon Beastall, himself a seasoned folkie, I’ll also be meeting up with Kevin Young soon to find out more about the Beggar’s Folk Club’s move to Kilnsea.
