Mum and Dad Farley have really started blending in with the natives. My father is on the right.
Following on from the horrors of Knebworth, my next sojourn into the delights of dressing up as a big Tudor jessie saw me driving round the M25 for a return appearance at Bourne Hall Museum in the leafy suburbs of Epsom and Ewell. You may remember my visit I spoke about last year, and how Bourne Hall itself resembles a BBC Sci Fi special effect alien space ship from the 1970's - well it still does. And much as I was hoping the entire cast of Blake's 7 were going to turn up and start teleporting me about, they didn't. Not even Sally Knyvette, and she was seriously gorgeous back in the years before Margaret Thatcher, but more about her later.
I was greeted at the museum by it's two main men - David and Jeremy, both of whom have a touch of the Womble about them. You tend to get the feeling that they actually live in the ramshackle store room they use as an office, and both of them have the look of people who don't see daylight very often. You can imagine them walking out the front door and pausing in the sun to blink slowly and rub their eyes at the sparkling wonder of it all. They are both lovely and greeted me with a welcoming cup of tea and various anecdotes they had just acquired about the local Home Guard from the second World War. Once more my show was on down in the theatre in the bowels of the building, and once more we were packed out for both shows. When I finished my first show I headed back up to their warren.... I mean office, for a spot of lunch which turned out to be an out of date jam doughnut with the consistency of a cannon ball, followed by a slice of lemon drizzle cake which was delicious. So swings and roundabouts. The second show was equally fun and we ended with a grand Tudor Foot Wrestling competition. How do you describe Foot Wrestling? Well I don't, just imagine trying to push someone over, without using your hands, standing on one leg and not being allowed to kick or stamp on your opponent. Yeah, like that.
I drove back to Somerset from Epsom and got home about 6.30pm. Cooking seemed like an incredibly stupid idea at this time and after such a long drive, so off to the Chinese I went for a delicious plate of MSG's floating in grease. You could hear your arteries hardening and you chewed.
My next Henry show was on the Friday night at Mudford. Mudford is a funny little village just to the north of Yeovil and on the way to the delightfully named Queen Camel. They obviouly have a strong community spirit in Mudford and each Friday night at their delighful village hall they have an "event" where the guests arrive and get stuck into a nice buffet, drink some wine and are then entertained by some speech, singer or other entertainer. This was their first Friday night event of the summer of 2013 and they had invited me along to be the "turn". We had a lovely evening, an absolutely wonderful audience, about 50 people in total and lots of laughs. I was well fed and watered (Shepherd and Neame Spitfire to quench my thirst) and a splendid evening seemed to be had by all.
And so to the weekend, and I was off to Wales to see my folks. It is my father's birthday this week (today actually - the 9th) and originally there was supposed to be a whole phalanx of us trotting down the M4 to the land of song, rugby and worried sheep, but as life has unfolded this week with it's ups, but to be honest mostly downs, the car got emptier until in the end it was just me trolling down the road. But I have had a lovely time in the kind welcoming embrace of my family - a lovely meal over at the Daffodil Pub, a visit to the National Wool Museum (believe it or not) and lots of bargains at all the fantastic antiques shops in Newcastle Emlyn. I am off to the delightfully named Gwber tomorrow for a Henry show with the local Probus club. Should be fun.
Oh and Margaret Thatcher kicked the bucket. Even as we speak she is trying to privatise hell.
