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!