A lot of a break

Last Thursday evening marked a major point in the almost-seven-year history of Said the Maiden. They played two fabulous sets at a packed Redbourn Folk Club, the club at which they started their folk-singing career together. On this occasion, they were saying goodbye to Hannah, who was leaving to concentrate on her musical partnership with her fiancé. It was a really good evening, with the Maidens on really good form.



Jess and Kathy have been rehearsing with a new third member for several months now, and her identity will be revealed in the new year. It's all very exciting, and Grace and I are very much looking forward to their first gig around autumn 2019. The past six years of our close association with Hannah, Jess and Kathy have given us a great deal of pleasure. It's been fun, and it's been a great privilege to have had them rehearsing in our front room, to have followed them around the UK for many of their gigs, to have been involved in small ways in the recording of their albums, and to have had the inside story of their experiences from Jess. This Thursday night saw the end of Said the Maiden's original line-up, but there are great things in store for the new trio. The best is yet to come!

Jess got some surprise news last week. Very good news! Without the members of The Company of Players even being aware that this was on the cards, their debut album "Shakespeare Songs" was included in the Sunday Times Magazine's top 100 albums of the year! Only the top 10 are numbered; the other 90 are just lumped together, though divided into categories - Pop, World/Roots (where CoP were put), Jazz, Classical, Contemporary and Historical. So the Players were up there with top orchestras, The 1975, George Ezra, Bodega, Ariane Grande... the list goes on! You can imagine their excitement!!

Last Saturday was our 45th wedding anniversary, and we chose to spend a long weekend in Peterborough. We needed a bit of a break. A lot of a break! I'd seen the cathedral on TV, and views of the old town with its half-timbered houses and quaint streets and passages. It looked interesting, and so it was, though the weather - damp with knife-like winds - tried hard to put us off.

We'd reserved a room in a central hotel, and were given an upgrade because their restaurant was going to be unavailable during our stay. Our top-floor window looked out over the railway, the River Nene and the edge of the town. Yellow brick railway warehouses are now Asda, solicitors, estate agents, and Pets Я Us. One morning we watched as a huge cloud of steamy smoke brought an old steam train past, hauling smart Pullman carriages. You don't see many of those these days!



Must-sees in town were the splendid cathedral in which a choir and orchestra were preparing for a major Christmas music concert that evening...

...the Church in the Square - the Church of St John the Baptist...

...and the River Nene.

Something of an oddity was an ancient Dutch barge, once a restaurant but now looking very neglected, which lies between two bridges, neither of which are tall enough for it to go under.



The same applies to a nearby floating Chinese restaurant.



Whilst shopping was far from being a reason why we visited Peterborough, it would have been foolish for us not to venture into the Queensgate Shopping Centre - not all of our Christmas shopping had been done. It was a very busy mall dotted with joyous groups of carol-singers and heaving with stressed shoppers. Joy to the world!

Our drive home was via Kantara - she was fine, of course - and Ikea. More heaving humanity. And now back to Christmas reality. We have a sagging floor under a kitchen sink. The worktop the sink is in is sinking in sympathy. It's an insurance case. Someone's coming tomorrow to start to dismantle a large chunk of the kitchen to find out what's going on. Fun!

It's panto time! We haven't been to a pantomime for decades, and this one seems to be exceptionally good. "Snow White" at the Harpenden Halls is Jess's baby. She was responsible for finding and engaging this particular company, and the show has been really well received. So we'll be seeing it on Friday. More fun!

Talking of improvements...

Remember this?

Spot the difference?

No, it didn't fall, and it wasn't pushed (though I did do my best!). I came home one day recently to see a Herts County Council Highways Dept. van parked opposite the house, and two men studying the tree carefully, bouncing it, swinging it, and generally becoming really quite alarmed about it! 

They'd simply been driving down the road, and they spotted it. They weren't responding to my various communications with the Department. They'd been ignored. I'd been fobbed off with half-hearted promises that a team would be out to deal with it "soon". The senior of these two men was on the phone to his office, and his tone was seriously angry, and I heard the words "damage", "injured", "killed!" and "bloody idiots!" as he berated them roundly for having allowed the tree to get like that.

He phoned them back and had another go at them after I'd told them my story.

Less than two hours later, a team arrived and did the deed. Why they left the split stump I don't know, but it is certainly a huge improvement!

Talking of improvements, it'd take a lot to beat this...

Grace and I are supporters of a charity you may well not have heard of. It's true, they don't seem to get much publicity via the media, but Mercy Ships do the most amazing work, taking Africa Mercy, a ship crewed by almost 500 people from many nations, most of them volunteers, to various parts of Africa. Spending months in each port, they perform surgeries to literally thousands of desperately needy folk who cannot otherwise get the treatment they need.

Dreadful growths like this

are removed.

Distorted limbs like this...

are corrected.

Around 7,000 surgeries and other treatments are performed each year,

and hundreds and hundreds of local, African doctors are trained in the necessary procedures, so that the work can be carried on after Mercy Ships leaves.

To date, since they started work in 1978, 2,500,000 people have been helped in 55 countries, 40,000 local professionals have been trained, and the monetary value of their services is put at around $1,000,000,000.

It is an awe-inspiring undertaking. If you want to know more, click here.

Each year, Mercy Ships UK invite their supporters to a Christmas Carol Service. Several cathedrals across the UK host these, and our nearest was Southwark, on London's south bank. We hadn't been before, having only become Friends in April this year.

It was an unpleasant, mizzly Wednesday evening, but that didn't stop anyone. We had hoped to eat in the cathedral Refectory before the service, but found it closed. We ate peanuts and drank bottled water standing against a wall, looking out across a cold, dark Thames.

When the service started, the cathedral was full (the photos above were not taken that evening!), the choir and organ were wonderful, and the whole evening was very enjoyable. Quite moving. Mince pies and mulled wine were served before we set off into the damp night, smiling and humming carols, and feeling rather more Christmassy.

'tis the season...

In the Distill household, the Christmas season is officially launched, not by the switching on of St Albans' lights...

(this year at two different locations, one at the high street main stage featuring stars of the Alban Arena's pantomime Cinderella, and the other at the Clock Tower by St Albans mayor Rosemary Farmer to the accompaniment of festive tunes from local musician Minnie Birch - of whom you will hear a lot more in the coming months)

...but by the playing of Jon Anderson's Three Ships album in our living room.

And it happened today, the fourth day of Advent. I spent a couple of hours leafleting one corner of the city for the local Green Party, and returned home to find the Christmas tree in place and illuminated, and the surrounding floor covered with all of the dangly things we could possibly dangle on it. Jess came home from work, Three Ships was launched, the tree was adorned, and the Season was welcomed in.

It'll look even more the part when the rest of the decorations go up and I photograph it with a better camera and no flash!

Yesterday, Grace and I shared Bohemian Rhapsody with two other couples at the local Odeon. It's brilliant, a must-see for every Queen fan! We've been waiting until its final week of showing - and went at 2:30 - in order to miss the crowds; hence the small audience!

So, the tree's up, the tree's lit, the rest of the decorations are in now in boxes on the floor and very much in the way, insisting that we finish the job very soon. Mince pies are part of our staple diet, and I've started writing the cards.

Darn! I forgot to buy the sherry!