A phone call out the blue.

It was the nice people from Tortoise, Chester’s independent magazine.

They had a stand at the Good Life Experience, the annual festival of, well, good life, taking over Hawarden for a weekend each September.

And they were thinking of running some writing workshops to encourage visitors to react to the sights, sounds and, in particular characters at the festival.

That’s where I would come in.

So it was last Saturday was spent running three workshops during the day [that’s group one with me, above].

We encouraged wannabe bloggers and writers to explore the festival site in search of a good story and a even better soundbite.

I had adults, kids, creative writing students and fledgling mummy bloggers amongst others.

But they had one thing in common: they all did us proud.

From a profile of a dog portrait photographer (yes, that is a thing) to two schoolgirls saving the world from plastic (check out Kids Against Plastic), it was a rich source of material.

Okay, I missed the set by Michael Head as I was working but it was great fun and we had loads of nice comments afterwards, such as:

Thanks for a fab writing workshop at this weekend’s @TheGoodLifeExp with @atkinsondavid – now writing up!

— Dal (@LaughterAngel1) September 19, 2017

Look out for the edited compilation of stories in the next issue of Tortoise magazine.

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