Alan Sillitoe was a locally born writer who's seminal work is Saturday Night, Sunday Morning. The tale of a Raleigh factory employee who works hard during the week churning out bicycle parts and playing hard at the weekend; downing pints of beer, picking fights and pulling birds, sorry women at the weekend. He sadly died in 2010, and his son David, amongst others are trying to raise enough funds to create a statue of some kind in the city centre, to honour his litraturial greatness.
Tonight's event mixed verse with music from a great local band called Blue Yonder, who play a mixture of their own tunes and covers in a rocky/country/bluesy way. David read out some of his dad's poems, and there were the results and prize giving for a poetry competition that has been running and and a couple of professional poets read out some of their work.
It was a very enjoyable evening quite well attended. Hopefully a fair bit of money was raised. Maybe enough to pay for an ear or a couple of fingers for the statue. There are a number of other events taking place across the forthcoming year. Gail and I plan to make it to some, if not all of them. We will probably make it to some other Blue Yonder gigs too, especially as a few of them are quite local to us. Here's a shot of three of the band members of the band in action. For more info on the Alan Sillitoe fund raising events, here's a link to the website
Sounds good Christopher.
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