Maltman's Green, 50 Years of Who and Mistletoe Fayre.

Good King Hal and Jane Seymour having a "moment" on the stairs.

And so a week of work began with a trip back to Maltman's Green School near Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire.  On my previous two visits, the first time I went I arrived horrendously early and had to sit around kicking my heels until someone turned up to let me in, so the next visit I decided to stay at a nearby hotel and wander over at a reasonable hour.  That time I got stuck in horrible local traffic and was nearly late, so I decided to leave early in the morning from Somerset and enjoy a gentle perambulation up to Buckinghamshire and try and arrive on time.  Initially this seemed to be going the way of the original journey as I was miles ahead of my time, and so I was already contemplating how I would pass the time until the school opened.  What could I do?  Untie my belly button and see if my bottom fell off?  Possibly.  Try and work out what the hell anyone finds entertaining about The X Factor, or any programme remotely to do with Simon Cowell?  Probably not enough time for that one.  Plan an atom bomb attack on Chatham?  Well, that one is quite well advanced already and to be honest if I did do it, probably no one would notice I'd been.  I can see the headlines already...  100 MEGATON BOMB DROPPED ON CHATHAM IN KENT... GOVERNMENT ESTIMATE NEARLY £2-WORTH OF DAMAGE.  But what the heck.  In the end my desires to have a restful stop and think were scuppered by a lorry catching fire on the A40.  By the time I got to this road I was less than six miles to the school and had about an hour and a half to spare.  That entire hour and a half was eaten up by sitting in the stationary traffic caused by this conflagration and I arrived at the school pretty much on time.

Maltman's Green is a lovely school.  It is an all girls private school, but comes across as very friendly and quite down to Earth.  I was very warmly welcomed by the teacher who had booked me, even though she sounded and looked very poorly, the poor love.  She was full of cold, very croaky and obviously not herself.  And the poor love didn't last that long.  Less than half an hour into the day she had to leave to go home.  She either felt very ill or had heard all my crap jokes before.  I reckon on the latter...  I was looked after by a very nice teacher who had officially retired the previous year, but came back from time to time to help out, and had come in especially to take over from the poorly lady.  And she could not do enough for me!  She even went off and got my dinner for at lunch time - an OBE is in the post to her, even as I type.  The kids were great, very lively and fun, and there was a good deal of good Tudor knowledge from all the pupils.  The jousting was great as well, but of course, being an all girls school I can't add their score to the ongoing jousting score.  That would be just unfair to the boys, and lets face it folks, they need all the help they can get when it comes to the jousting.

I left just after 3.30pm and had a very pleasant, if dark journey home.  It was overcast and miserable most of the way and there was a definite chill in the air.  Winter, if not in full vigour, is certainly close to finishing it's warm up routine.  I stopped at Waitrose in Crewkerne and treated myself to a bottle of wine, and then nipped to the Chinese for a very welcoming take away.

Thursday night I met up with Matthew Applegate from Barrington Court for a pint or two at the Rose and Crown at East Lambrook.  When I arrived he was in a very down state of mind.  Hardly surprising considering the way he and his family have been so appallingly treated by the National Trust lately.  He even looked cross when he discovered there was a quiz on at the pub that evening. At first we were going to sit it out in an adjacent room, but eventually we decided to take part.  There was just me and Matthew in our "team".  Most of the other tables had at least 6+ players on them.  And we won!  Wonderfully!  Though quite what I fully intend to do with my £12 prize money, I don't know.  A holiday in the Seychelles, perchance?  On £12?  I could get six months in Chatham for that.  In fact, I could buy Chatham for that and get change.  But it was great to see Matthew and he seemed pretty well cheered up when we left, but I think a couple of large slugs of Lagavulin had helped his general demeanour as much as my bonhomie.

Saturday and Sunday was the annual Barrington Court Mistletoe Fayre.  I was due to be doubly blessed at this event with the lovely Sarah Morris joining me on the Saturday, and the beautiful Katherine Miller playing my Queen on the Sunday.  As it was, poor Sarah had to cry off a couple of days earlier as she was just as poorly as the teacher at Maltman's Green had been.  She sounded truly unwell when I spoke to her on the phone.  So for the Saturday it was to be just me wandering round.  On the Saturday we were blessed with perfect weather.  It was bright, sunny and very cold - absolutely wonderful.  And the crowds turned out in their droves.  We supposedly had well over a thousand visitors on the first day alone, which is probably close to a record for the Mistletoe Fayre.  When I had finished at Barrington, I drove back to Crewkerne to pick up Katherine Miller from the station.  It was lovely to see her.  As you can see from the picture above, she is a stunningly beautiful lady, but is just so kind and friendly with it.  One of the nicest, gentlest souls you could ever wish to meet.  I drove her over to her digs at Shepton Beauchamp - she was staying at the Duke of York pub run by my good friends Paul and Hayley Rowlands.  They have superb new B&B facilities there and were kind enough to let me book the room for Katherine at a reduced rate.  Kat and I had dinner together at the pub - a sumptuous meal.  I have to say that my chicken and chorizo pie was quite outstanding, but the shoulder of lamb that Katherine had looked even better.  We put the World to rights and had a wonderful laugh and long chat into the night, before I drove back to Crewkerne.  I was not destined for an early night though...

Doctor Who has been one of my great passions since I was seven years old.  I can tell you the very moment I was bitten by the bug.  I was taken shopping in Chelmsford by my late paternal grandmother.  Whenever this happened she would buy me (or my sisters when it was their turn) various little pressies throughout the day.  As it was, our last port of call this particular day in 1974 was WH Smiths.  I was in the book department looking for something to keep me occupied for the weekend - and I first laid eyes on the wonderfully exciting covers drawn by Chris Achilleos, of the Doctor Who books range by Target Books.  My grandmother told me I could have one, but which was it to be?  The Abominable Snowman, showing a large Yeti menacing Patrick Troughton, or The Daemons, which showed a giant devilish figure seeming just on the verge of stamping on Jon Pertwee.  I could not make up my mind.  But time was racing and my Grandfather, fresh out of The Nags Head in Baddow Road, would be waiting in his car behind Bond's Department store, ready to whisk us to Moulsham Street and the fish and chip shop, and then home to their house in Margaretting for the cod and chips feast.  So I took blind luck and chose The Abominable Snowman, as the Yeti just looked so menacing.  I got to my Grandparents, started reading, and was transfixed!  It was a terrifying tale and great to read, plus it was a whole Doctor Who story I had never ever seen or even heard of before!  The next morning my Doctor Who addiction was completed when my Grandmother presented me with a copy of The Daemons as an extra present!  From then on I was completely and utterly hooked.

Saturday night just gone was the 50th anniversary of the first ever broadcast of Doctor Who, and a special was made and transmitted on BBC1, and throughout the globe featuring current Doctor, Matt Smith, David Tennant as the previous incarnation, and the incomparable John Hurt as a mysterious and, up till now, unknown previous Doctor.  It was epic, wonderful stuff and I sat transfixed watching this programme and immediately felt myself transported back to those Saturday early evenings in the 70's.  The escapism of it all.  The Doctor could take me away from the misery of school (God, I hated it) and whisk me off to unknown lands and planets, where nothing from my normal life mattered any more.  And the absolute icing on the cake for me with the 50th Anniversary show, was right at the end, a cameo appearance from Tom Baker - my Doctor.  He looked as old as I felt after that day of marching around Barrington, but it was still him.  That mysterious stranger, the hero who didn't kick the door in and machine gun all the baddies.  Guns were for thugs, this man was an interstellar gentleman. He would baffle them with science, humour, jelly babies and his galactic sized intelligence.  God, how I wanted to be like him.  So to Doctor Who, and the fellow anoraks like me who have had the mickey taken over the past 50 years for our love of this pacifist superhero, thank you.  Thank you for everything.  And here is to the next 50 years of limitless time travel and adventure.

Sunday was back at Barrington with Katherine Miller - the weather was a little overcast, and the numbers probably slightly down on the Saturday, but it was still tremendous fun.  Any walkabout at an historical house is pleasant, but when you get to do it in the presence of a beautiful intelligent lady like Katherine it makes it all the more special.  We had laughs a plenty, had a good jaw about life, the universe and everything, and the day seemed to pass in a shot.  We spoilt ourselves by buying some goodies at the end from some of the myriad of stalls, and soon we were changed and I was whisking Katherine back to Crewkerne Station and her train back to London.  I waved her off from the platform, and then drove home and, you guessed it, watched the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary episode again.  What an anorak!  It really had been a fantastic weekend.  Fun all the way and how a two days of historical house visits should be.  Not a cross word!

Next stop for the King is tomorrow with a return to the lovely Maynard School in Exeter, and a chance to catch up with my friend Keagh Fry.

From Merseyside to Buckinghamshire - I Say!

Good King Hal showing Anne Boleyn her new residence.  Travelling by river taxi as they were would apparently get them there "chop chop".  Smashing.

It was going to be a long week, some estimates put it at over six days, but I'm not sure.  It begins last weekend where we find the King at home and full of cold.  Not a happy Tudor bunny, and if you want to know just how ill I was....?  Well, I cancelled an evening of drinking beer with Matthew Applegate.  Now THAT is ill.  On the Sunday I found myself on the M5 heading north on my way towards Liverpool.  The reason for this Royal Progress North?  The King was to appear at Liscard Primary School in Wallasey, an area of the country that I really have not visited in about 31 years.  I was booked into a Travelodge in New Brighton which didn't really sound a desperately enticing prospect, however when I got there it was amazing to behold.  The front by the sea wall has been enormously redeveloped of late, to be honest they're still doing it, but are very nearly finished.  The Travelodge is cheek by jowl next to various restaurant and coffee house-type outlets, and backs onto an enormous Morrisons and a cinema.  This may sound horrific but in it's seaside location it actually looks quite good.  Sadly the wall they've built round the hotel car park looks like the sort of solid rock obstacle you'd see around a Soviet Gulag.  After checking in I asked the receptionist where the nearest petrol station was - apparently about 20 minutes away, and I was amazed to discover it was!  As you drive towards Seacombe from Wallasey you see all aspects of Merseyside, from pleasant leafy side roads that gently slip down to the water front, to long terraces of shops, boarded up and covered with graffiti and one or two burnt out shells of buildings.

Liscard Primary is a lovely school, formerly being a Grammar School, and inside a lot of money has obviously recently been spent to redevelop the site.  I had a group of about 90 children today, mostly year 4 and they were fun.  My chest was tight and full of coughing fits, plus my throat would occasionally dry up and more coughing would ensue - my how we laughed.  But I got through the morning and we had lots of fun with the children.  After lunch I was back in the main hall for the stocks and jousting.  Both were as popular as ever and the joust was of a particularly high standard and culminated in an amazing finish as the boys just needed one quoit to win the race, but their final rider just could not get the final target clear of the quintaine.  The ladies snuck through to claim an amazing victory.  Quite remarkable stuff.  Our score now goes to:

GENTLEMEN 3 - 5 LADIES

And so the poor old gents losing streak goes on.  I packed away my stuff and began the long drive back from Merseyside to Somerset.  I have to admit by the time I got home I felt like death warmed up and the prospect of getting in the car the following day and driving all the way to Buckinghamshire for another show really did not appeal.  However, my lovely Shelley had a brilliant idea.  Rather than me phone up Maltman's Green School in Gerards Cross (my next destination) and say "I'be godda code ib by doze..." why don't I phone them and say "I've got a bit of a sniffle, I don't want to pass on my germs to your lovely pupils, would you like me to stay away until I am all better?", and they said "Nah, come on in and infect everyone!"  Well, not in so many words...

So I found myself driving up to another Travelodge, only this time in Beaconsfield.  This was a lot different from New Brighton, it was a 1930's building that looked like it had snuck in behind an old coaching inn and had simply died of embarrassment there.  It was hard to find, but very comfortable inside.  I settled down for the evening and decided I would be soothed into a beautiful sleep by watching England play Poland in a World Cup qualifying game.  The match was to be played in Warsaw's brand new, multi-million pound, state-of-the-art stadium with retractable roof for use during inclement weather.  Well, it was frightfully inclement in Warsaw, but no one had actually remembered to close the sodding hi-tech roof, so we had the surely unique experience of a football match due to be played in a brand new stadium with a retractable roof being called off due to a water-logged pitch.  Another first for Europe.

I had only been at Maltman's Green a few months previously and had happy memories of a friendly fun school, and I had remembered correctly.  It is a girl's school, and all the young ladies were dressed in superb Tudor costumes.  It was a fun day all round, my throat and chest managed to survive all the way through and the jousting finale was of an incredibly high standard, but sadly as it was not a co-ed site, the result cannot be added to our year long score.  What a shame.  We had a great day and I was pleased to be on my way back.  I listened to the re-arranged England v Poland game, and it was so exciting I nearly fell into a coma.  Michael Carrick played in such a brilliant way.  Every single pass he made went straight to a white shirt.  It was such a pity England were wearing blue that evening.  What a bunch of over paid tossers.

And so the King is home briefly, tonight he is off to Tatworth near Chard for a talk for the Tatworth WI (all together now "HOORAY FOR HOLLYWOOD!!!" etc etc.) before driving through the night to Maidstone to see my lovely Shelley.  I am then going over to East Grinstead for a get together with the Knights of Royal England and Tom Cruise.  Should be amazing.  Watch this space....

Maltman's Green School, Gerrards Cross

The Amazing Anuscheh Missaghian and her Life Like Full Size Ventriloquist Doll, King Happy Hal.  Why is he so happy?  Well you should see where her hand goes! "A smile. a song and a schism".  Available for cabaret, masonics and religious persecution.

I hope you like this picture - it was from Ingatestone Hall the other week when I met up with my old school friend Anuscheh - as you can see she has weathered far better than I have over the years - but then she did have a head start.

Now even I looked worse than I do in this picture on Tuesday morning as I had to be up by 4am for a drive up to Gerrard's Cross and a re-arranged show at Maltman's Green School.  I had often been told by Ian Weston from Portals to the Past about what a fine school this was, and he wasn't wrong.  I arrived early, and after the late night of the previous evening and the Rotary show, that by the time I got to the school I was exhausted.  So I parked up, set my alarm on my phone and had 40 winks, which was desperately needed and very welcome.  The weather was appalling so after I had been greeted by Steve Thomas, the teacher who had booked me, I was soon slipping and slithering through the rain loading my props into the hall.

It was a large group for a private school - over 60 children, and all girls - well it would be, Maltman's in an all girls school (well done, Sherlock, that was brilliant!).  Whatever you say about single sex schools I can tell you this - by God they were a loud group today!  They had virtually all dressed up in brilliant costumes - one little girl was even sporting a fake ginger beard and had a pillow stuffed up her costume to turn her into a mini Henry VIII!  Fantastic.  The morning, as with most private schools, is a lot longer than it is at a state school, but we had loads of laughs and I even managed to get the start of the stocks section done before we broke for a well earned lunch.  This turned out to be a delicious chicken korma, which was most welcome.  The final jousting tournament in the afternoon was indescribably loud in the echoey hall that we were in, but everyone seemed to have a good time.  There was even time for the King to have a go at the jousting taking part in a final race against a team that Mr Thomas had picked.  Normally I am away from schools by about 3.30pm at the latest, but in the end it was much nearer 4pm before I managed to slip away.  This put a bit of a spanner in the works for my evening plans.  I had been asked by some friends I am in a pub quiz team with to join them at the King Arthur Pub at Burrowbrigde in Somerset that evening.  If I had got away at a normal time I might just have made it, but the 4pm start was going to make it tricky - the appalling traffic round Stonehenge finished any chance I had of making it in time.  I had to text them my apologies - the text I got back made me realise they weren't very happy.  Oops.

No jousting score today as I can't really include a result from an all girls school, now can I?  I am now in Essex having just driven up for a show tomorrow at Lee Chapel School in sunny Basildon.  Sounds like it is going to be a good fun day tomorrow.  I can't wait.