Bethany Ray plays Lorna Lloyd

Hurrah - our podcast series launch day was a great success!

When we first saw the weather forecast at breakfast time - for thunder and lightening by 11:00am - we accepted kind Elly’s offer of a lift to Great Malvern Priory. In the event, the storm did not materialise. However, there was a terrific downpour at midday and Mr hazelh and I were really pleased to avoid a soaking when the heavens opened.

We spent most of the morning with Bruce in Great Malvern Priory setting up for the two deliveries of our Diary of the war podcast series launch event programme. In the lead-up to the official start time, we also chatted with members of the Napier team, and with early arrivals for the event. We even persuaded some casual morning visitors to the priory to come back later to join the audience for our podcast series launch.

By 2pm the pews at Great Malvern Priory started to fill up with audience members from near and far. There was a lovely atmosphere as Lloyd family members (some of whom had never met before) found one another and worked out their relationships, blippers hunted down their brethren, and the local audience members mingled with the out-of-town visitors. The red ribbon pins for family members, and blue ones for blippers, that I made in advance helped everyone with the identification process.  

At 2:30pm it was time for the ‘performance’: first Faith Renger of Malvern Museum introduced Lorna and wartime Malvern; then Mr hazelh’s niece Bethany Ray, who plays her great-great aunt Lorna in the podcast series gave some readings; and finally there was a Q&A session with the team. There was a break between 4:30pm and 5:30pm for tea/coffee and biscuits (served by Marianne and Katherine), then we ran the whole programme again for our (smaller) evening audience. My colleague Bruce, who has done a marvellous job of leading and managing the Platform to Platform project, was a fabulous chair for the whole event.

For me, the highlight of the programme was Bethany’s performance as Lorna. She worked from a script that I wrote for her, and I could not be more proud of the way in which she delivered it. At one point I thought I was going to embarrass all the Edinburgh Napier team members - Bruce, Marianne, Katherine and David - by bursting into tears as Bethany read Lorna’s powerful poetry, but somehow I held it together.

After the end of formal proceedings and a quick tidy up, Mr hazelh and I headed up the hill to the Mount Pleasant Hotel for a lovely family meal in the Mulberry Restaurant. We were: Mr hazelh, his mother, his step-father, his sister Sam, his niece Bethany, his uncle and aunt, his godmother and her husband, our brother-in-law, and me.

My main blip is of Bethany holding the war diary, and in the extra is a shot of the family at dinner.

For further information about the day, please see the LornaLPodcast journal. This also has links to other event reviews by blippers, and to the podcast episodes.

Exercise today: none.