My article in this week's Visiter

This week I have picked out a couple of events that I attended either side of the Easter holiday beginning with my visit to the Formby Passion Play on Good Friday. The play was attended by about 500 people who assembled in Chapel Street and walked, singing Easter hymns, to the land adjacent to the Formby Pool where the play was performed. This year’s play was written and directed by Dympna Edwards and was a great success. Everyone at Churches Together in Formby should be congratulated for the staging of this performance. It brought the community together and it was good to see folk from all the churches -and some who were not connected at all- playing their part The second visit I have chosen was to the Freshfield Animal Rescue Centre in Ince Blundell. It was good of them to invite me, but I did think that they were taking a bit of a risk asking a politician to speak at an event called 'Rabbit On'. I was well behaved and stuck to me brief. My chief responsibility was to present a volunteer award to Ethel Webber who has been a regular at Ince Blundell since 1995. Meeting so many dedicated volunteers like Ethel has been one of the highlights of my mayoral year. It is folk like her that make such an enormous difference to our community. Charities like Freshfield could not operate without the active participation on their army of voluntary workers

I also met Chelsea who was giving a talk on hedgehogs and she introduced me to two of her charges; Belinda and Hugo. They were both brought to the centre before the hibernation time. Their body weight and injuries meant that left in the wild they almost certainly would not have survived. The centre has about 75 hedgehogs at present fit and ready to be returned to the great outdoors.

I had no idea of the breadth of the work undertaken at the centre which has now been open for 40 years. It was good to see so many people attending the event and I wish the centre every success in the coming years.

I have a busy diary next week which includes a 100^th birthday, a visit to the migrant workers’ project, Lydiate Village Festival and a charity cricket match at Churchtown.