A Big Trip.

Schloss Haigerloch, just before the Tudor invasion.

I had never done an overseas show as Henry before - not unless you count the Isle of Wight or Wales as abroad.  I know some people who would, but then I know some people who actually like Lambrini.  Well if you recall, or if you have actually been brave enough to read this blog for that long, about two years ago I was invited up to Hexham in Northumberland for a visit to a Shakespeare group who regularly got together with their combined love of the works of The Bard, but have since been working on a project called "The Bard Code", with the plan to build the ultimate database of Shakespearean data and make it accessible for everyone throughout the world.  Next year is the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare and the plan is to launch the Bard Code in time for a concerted effort to get the 23rd April 2015 made into an official public holiday.  I was thrilled to be asked back by the group as Henry to front their latest get together which was to take place at the beautiful German castle of Schloss Haigerloch near Stuttgart.  Once more I would be travelling there with my sister Cathy (who has been working with the Bard Code group as their main graphics designer for quite some time now) and her husband Julian.

I travelled down to Cath and Julian's in Kent on the evening of the 24th April.  We loaded all of our luggage, including my huge Henry VIII suitcase into their Jeep Grand Cherokee and we were off down the M2 to get to Dover for the midday ferry sailing on the 25th.  After we had stopped briefly for fuel we noticed an unpleasant grinding sound coming from the rear right wheel.  Julian had a check and reckoned it was the brake pad making contact with the wheel itself.  It was noisy, but shouldn't cause any problems.  The plan was to disembark at Dunkirk after our crossing and then make our way to Heidelberg in Germany for an over night stop before pressing on to Haigerloch on the Saturday.  We drove ashore at Dunkirk with the local time being 3pm (we had gained an hour on arrival on the continent).  We hoped to be in Heidelberg by about 8pm in the evening.  We soon realised we might be a little bit later than we had hoped.  It was a bright and very warm Friday afternoon and it appeared the good people of Belgium were very much like the people of Britain who as soon as the sun comes out on a Friday there is a mass exodus to ANYWHERE that might constitute a holiday.  The roads were rammed, in particular around Antwerp, whose ring road bore an uncanny resemblance to the M25.  What we had for added entertainment was the Belgian mentality when it came to traffic jams.  It appears to them that you simply can't sit there in one lane and move up from time to time - no, you have to leap from lane to lane, into the smallest of spaces in the vain hope that it might just move you half a centimetre closer to your destination.  The Belgian authorities also had a bit thing for digging up these roads - every time we cleared one section of snarled up traffic, we'd move a few miles and then encounter MORE dug up stretches of carriageway and snarled up lane leaping traffic.  Time clicked on, the grinding wheel on the back of the Jeep got louder and we seemed to never get any closer to Heidelberg. Darkness began falling and we carried on our way.  In the distance you could see flashes of lightning, the traffic thinned out and we finally seemed to make some progress, but the monumental hold ups throughout Belgium meant out ETA at Heidelberg was now nearer to midnight.  We phoned ahead to the Hotel Molkenkur (our venue) and explained how late we were, but they were fine and said someone would be there to meet us regardless of the time of our arrival.  We stopped briefly for more fuel and a meal (a bloody Burger King of all things) and carried on.  The distant thunder and lightning got closer and closer and suddenly we were hit with torrential rain and flashes of lightning and booming rolls of thunder.  Finally we found ourselves in the back roads of Heidelberg, and as the storms slowly passed us by we wound up steep winding lanes to the entrance of Hotel Molkenkur.  It was a fantastic looking building, and I think we might have been a tad more impressed had it not been past midnight and all three of us were utterly exhausted.  We checked in, wandered up to our rooms and just fell into bed.

I awoke to birdsong and sunlight dappling through my bedroom window.  After getting myself showered and dressed I wandered over to Cathy and Julian's room.  They were at the front of the building and their view out down over the town and the Neckar River way below was stunning.  We had breakfast in the hotel restaurant, and pausing briefly for a cup of tea and a well earned fag we were soon on our way again.  Heidelberg and the Hotel Molkenkur both looked lovely, but to be honest, including a long sleep we were probably only there for less than 10 hours all told due to the appalling journey down.  We made rapid progress and the final leg of the journey down to Haigerloch was probably only about 2 hours.  The town of Haigerloch is very pleasant and typically German.  Tall half timbered buildings line the winding streets with the Castle on it's rock summit looming over the town.  It was bright warm sunshine on our arrival and we wandered the streets trying to find somewhere suitable for a bit of lunch before we checked into the Schloss. We plumped for a nice looking pizza bar in the centre of the town and settled into chairs round a table. Beers were ordered and beers were drunk.  The waitress didn't speak English and our German wasn't great, but it was pretty obvious what each of the pizza toppings were.  However, somehow the pizza I ordered and the one Julian ordered came out as completely different pizzas, but they were home made and very tasty.  And the beers kept coming which was fabulous.  We finally finished the lunch and made our way up to the Schloss and booked in.  Haigerloch is an ancient castle dating back over 800 years, but has been sympathetically restored and now comprises of function suites, a small theatre, and a luxurious hotel.  After booking in we went up to our rooms - Cath and Julian were on the 1st floor and I was on the 2nd.  I climbed to my floor and turned down the corridor towards my room - I was reading a small leaflet about the Castle and didn't notice the step.  It was a small step.  VERY small.  In fact, utterly pointless.  Why would any corridor need a step of about 1 inch height?  Surely with a bit of intelligent building work you could make it into a barely discernible ramp.  But as it was, it was still a annoying little 1 inch step.  I caught my toe in it.  I next took to that really embarrassing part of falling over, which is the 4 or 5 half running, half staggering steps you take, when you think you're going to remain upright.  It is about this time that dear old gravity kicks in and you just go "sod it" and go with it.  Crunch.  Down I went with a real proper face plant into the carpet. At this point I took to clutching my shattered ribs and thinking "ooh fuck" a lot.  With the noise someone of my build hitting the ground and with the copious amounts of swearing that I was now doing I fully expected to either hear people coming running to my aid, or at least to hear some slates coming loose on the roof.  But no one appeared.  I tottered gingerly the final five paces to my front room and examined my injuries in the mirror in my well appointed bedroom.  Apart from a slightly disappointing graze to my elbow and wrist, there was little else to see.  My ribs throbbed merrily though and would continue to do so for the rest of our stay in Germany.

The main body of the Shakespearean fans we had met at Hexham two years ago arrived via coach later in the afternoon.  The first nights entertainment was in the Castle's delightful little theatre and was a jazz swing band. The event was open to our group and also to anyone from the locality who might have seen all the posters with my ugly mug on the front dotted around town.  My job as Henry VIII for the first night was on a meet and greet basis at the front of the theatre.  It was gratifying that most of the locals seemed to know who I was, which was great, and I posed for a variety of photos.  A lot of the Shakespearean lot had dressed up as different characters, some of them a bit more effective than others. The local big band swung into action and everyone disappeared inside.  Now as regular readers of this blog will know, I am not exactly the world's biggest jazz fan and I wasn't that bothered to see them perform or not.  I wandered up for the first half and was treated to the sound of the big band launching into an astonishing version of Van Halen's "Jump".  It was made all the funnier by their German pronunciation of "Jump" which kept coming out as "Yump".  So we had the leader of the band singing "I might as well Yump!" and the backing band would as one shout out "YUMP!" much to my delight.  "Go ahead and Yump!" "YUMP!" and so on.  Marvellous.  I spent most of the second half of the show sitting on the nice beer terrace at the rear of the hotel across the courtyard from the theatre, but I was back in position when the show finished to do a bit more meeting and greeting.  Or meeting and farewell-ing, I suppose.  My ribs were throbbing a bit and so it seemed only right to head back to my room and bed.  I didn't sleep very well - a combination of my ribs and vastly over soft pillows meant I tossed and turned nearly all night.

Most of Sunday was at our own leisure, so we spent some time in the morning just lounging around on sofas in the hotel reading.  We then had a little stroll round the rest of the Schloss and took some photos down across the town of Haigerloch.  We had lunch in the hotel, which was a tremendously German affair.  We had help with the translation of the menu by a young very camp waiter who bore an uncanny resemblance to Steve Pemberton in the League of Gentlemen when dressed as the German teacher Herr Lipp. Cathy knew she had ordered something with asparagus in a Bearnaise sauce, which is what she got, and Julian and I had ordered something with sausages.  What J and I got was bizarre.  It was a big round plate with a veritable ocean of brown soupy lentils, with noodles to one side that bore a startling resemblance to scrambled egg, such was their colour and texture, and two long thin Frankfurter sausages laid on top of the lentil pond.  It wasn't the most visually alluring meal you'd ever seen, but it filled a hole.  We repaired to Cathy and Julian's bedroom, where Julian flaked out on the bed and Cath and I joked and nattered about life in general.  Cathy had bought some scotch on the ferry over and we used room service to order some mixers and nibbles and got stuck into the whisky.  Soon I was in my Henry garb for the second night of entertainment.  For this one we were back in the theatre but the music was different - not big band jazz but madrigals and plainsong. Two members of the Shakespeare group are composers and had set some of the Bard's words to music. We were entertained by a woodwind quartet and a vocal quintet, with me working as master of ceremonies in between songs.  I went on at the start, unsure how much English the audience could actually speak.  I did one of my usual opening gags and thankfully got a big laugh, which revealed to me that the audience's English was vastly superior to my German.

As you can see from the scan of the back of the evening event's programme I had been demoted from King Henry VIII to King Henry VII, which is slightly annoying.  The nice local German chap who had designed and printed the programmes claimed it was a deliberate mistake to see who was paying attention.  It was a good argument but I didn't buy it.  All of the local Germans who had attended the evening were a delight to chat to, none more so than the very nice young Gothic lady (you know my penchant for Gothic ladies...) plus she had badges showing her interest in Siouxsie Sioux AND Doctor Who.  What more could any healthy elderly Tudor pervert possibly want?  Ribs that weren't still throbbing would be nice.  The show went a storm and we got a huge round of applause at the end.  The German vocal group then came back on for an unexpected encore with a rousing rendition of "Land of Hope and Glory" as a treat for all the British people present.  It was a lovely touch and brought the evening event to a powerful finale.  We stayed for lots of drinks with everyone at the bar afterwards, and it was a bit of a bleary eyed totter back to the hotel at the end.  Still the evening wasn't finished as despite all the beer we had drunk it seemed like a great idea to carry on giving the scotch a further hammering.  I finally wound up staggering up to my room in the wee small hours full of whisky and good humour.  I sat on the edge of the bed and whizzed through all the German TV channels to see if I could find anything vaguely understandable.  Well it was the usual fayre you'd expect - news programmes, football highlights from the bundesliga, a bit of boxing (one of the Klitschko brothers pummelling an overweight dustman from Mexico City into a pulp by the look of it), a Steven Seagal movie dubbed badly into German, "Friends" dubbed badly into German, Victoria Stillwell training dogs with a German translation, more news, politics and then all of a sudden two people stark naked banging away like traction engines.  That I didn't expect.  I was shocked, I was horrified.  And twenty minutes later I as still as equally shocked and horrified.  One of the funniest parts of it was that it was an American naughty movie that had been dubbed into German, so during all the rutting scenes we were treated to the sounds of two German actors giving lots of "oh jah! Oh jah!" and "das iss goot" etc etc. I could just imagine the two poor bastards in a small recording studio somewhere with head phones on and having to make lots of moaning groaning sounds.  It suddenly made me dressing up as Henry VIII for a living seem quite respectable and main stream. Definitely time for bed.

We had breakfast at the hotel, said our goodbyes to the Shakespeare lot and hit the road.  We were booked on the 8pm ferry from Dunkirk back to Dover, but reckoned with a bit of luck we might make the 6pm one instead.  We pushed it hard, despite the continuing noises from the rear right wheel.  After belting through Luxembourg, we stopped at a Belgian service station, had some lunch and blasted on our way.  Rather inevitably as we reached Antwerp we were once again mired in huge traffic jams, just as we had been on Friday afternoon.  Time ticked on and our chances of making the 6pm ferry seemed to have finally gone.  But Julian drove beautifully (fast but safe) and we made brilliant progress.  Sadly though we had just lost too much time and arrived at the ferry terminal in time to see the 6pm ship slipping off into the channel without us. We parked up and headed for the passenger centre with the promise of food, drink and toilets.  What we got was revolting uncleaned crappy toilets, most of which were out of commission, a closed cafe, loads of expensive vending machines, noisy video games and a grey concrete faceless building that resembled a military holding facility.  We headed back to the car.  There were more drinks vending machines outside.  Guess what?  They were out of order as well.  We sat reading in the car till the ferry loomed into view again.  Soon we were ready to load on board.  As Julian started the engine and put the jeep in gear we moved forward followed immediately by a load bang and very loud scraping sounds from the rear right wheel.  We limped on board the ferry to discover the rear right brake pad had shattered and had taken the brake lines with it as brake fluid was pouring out.  No brakes.  At least this had happened here on the ferry and not just after we had left Haigerloch.  As we had two hours before we arrived in Dover it gave Cath and Julian time to phone their roadside assistance group and arrange to have a low loader to meet us on our arrival back in Blighty.

When we did arrive back in England we still had more problems, the jeep was drivable but had no brakes so we had to be very careful.  But we found the low loader, and we were soon on board and on our way.  But it wasn't going to plain sailing was it.  Road after road that we needed to go down was closed, so in the end our journey that should have been about 40 minutes ended up taking nearly an hour and a half.  We finally got back to Cath and Julian's house at Stockbury just after midnight.  A welcoming cup of tea and it was time for bed.  It had been a wonderful weekend,  Good King Hal's first overseas show has been a success.  My ribs still hurt, but I don't care!  

Back to jousting again this weekend - Blenheim Palace here I come.  But thank you Haigerloch, it was great.

Ferries, New Costumes and Bizarre Questions...

Good King Hal, shamelessly using his blog in yet another attempt to flog off tickets to see Michael Wood (left) give a talk at the Chalke Valley History Festival next Friday (28th June).  You know you want to... Contact the King via his website (www.goodkinghal.co.uk) if you do!

In many of my recent adventures and visits to the Isle of Wight, I seem to have made something of an art form of missing the ferry.  I have slithered to a halt on the dockside at Lymington at various different times of day, to see the backside of the ferry I wanted, steaming happily out into the Solent without me on board.  With another visit to dear old Vectis due, I was determined this was not going to happen again.  I got up disgustingly early, knowing that I had to be at the ferry terminal for the 6.15am sailing over to Yarmouth.  I got ready, half scalded myself on a hastily slurped cup of tea and scuttled off to my car.  I punched in the post code into my sat nav and waited while it worked out how long it would take me to get to the ferry terminal.  It's initial estimated time of arrival was 6.16am.  Bu99er!  I was NOT going to miss another ferry.  So I drove like smoke down to Dorchester, along the Troy Town bypass, hammered past Wimborne with my tyres almost melting and by the time I reached Ringwood I was approaching light speed.  The ETA on my sat nav was now spiralling backwards - this was almost like time travel!  But it seemed that I was going to arrive at the ferry with a good 10 minutes to spare before the sailing at 6.15.  I got a clear run over the final miles and arrived at a worryingly empty looking ferry terminal at 5.59am.  It was only then as I sat on a virtually deserted concourse that I checked my paperwork.  I was actually booked on the 6.45am ferry.  Ah.  So I now had roughly three quarters of an hour to kill while I waited for the official ferry and could have done the whole journey with much less hyperspace and screaming.  Well, we live and learn.

Simple pleasures like just sitting and sleeping in your car as you scoot over the Solent in only about a half hour crossing, are now not allowed.  Due to that scourge of modern society - "health and safety", drivers must vacate their vehicles and then allow themselves to be incarcerated in the moodily lit passenger lounge where Wight Link Ferries spend the entire crossing trying to fleece cash out of you.  They stop just short of letting heavily muscled stevedores give you Chinese burns until you succumb, but it is surely only a matter of time before they introduce this.  I disembarked the ferry and began the pleasant drive across the island to Ryde and a return visit to Haylands Primary.  This was a different Haylands though this time, located as they now are in a brand new purpose built centre.  It is a stunning building, even more impressive inside than it is outside.  We had a great day at the school - a whole load of laughs, and some really nice children in great costumes.  I took great delight in choosing one classroom assistant to be Anne Boleyn in the morning session as she looked like Madonna, circa "Who's That Girl" and gave me a good excuse to crank out some elderly jokes.

After a very nice roast pork lunch it was a rollicking afternoon session.  The children roared with laughter throughout most of the nonsense I peddle out.  We came to a brilliant jousting session which a very good ladies team ran away with in the final. They are virtually unstoppable at the moment.

GENTLEMEN 19 - 26 LADIES

I began the long trek home, managed to catch the correct ferry and got home, clutching a Chinese take away and yawning like a good 'un.  It really was time for an early night.

Wednesday 19th was a day off, but I was off over to see the multi-talented Judy Picton to pick up my newest addition to my costumes.  Judy has created a beautiful black flowing doublet, with garnets and silver fixings.  It looks absolutely wonderful.  Judy is an absolute genius, very modest, but she really shouldn't be.  Her skills are undoubted and if anyone should need a truly gifted seamstress, this is the lady to go and see.  Judy Picton of Martock - you heard it here first folks.

My new costume didn't have long to wait for it's first outing.  I was back at one of my favourite schools today - Paulton Junior near Bristol.   l love this place - you are always guaranteed a very warm welcome from all the teachers and a group of very sparky, chatty, funny kids - and as ever all in fabulous costumes.  And today was no let down, a real bundle of laughs, and one very bizarre question in the "Q&A" section just before lunch.  All the usual questions had come out: "how fat was he?" "did he have pets?" "when was his birthday?" etc., when one little girl put her hand up and asked me very earnestly "Who are you?"  I was a bit taken aback.  "Er... me or Henry?" I enquired.  She looked at me hard for a few seconds and then said "I don't know".  And on that bombshell it was off to lunch - lots of pleasant chats in the staff room with the nice relaxed atmosphere that pervades this lovely school, and then more utter nonsense in the afternoon culminating in a much needed win for the Gents in the jousting.

GENTLEMEN 20 - 26 LADIES

It is seriously closer than it should be.  The ladies have seemed to have held the whip hand since the start of the educational year, but the boys have hung in there.  It was very hot today - not sunny, but very close and muggy, and by the end of our session in the afternoon I was flagging badly.  Never was I more grateful to sling the last of my Henry gear in the back of the car and climb in and turn on the air conditioning.  I drove home, pausing only at Popular Motors in Merriott to replace my shredded windscreen wiper blades which were so awful today that I spent most of the period driving up to Paulton in braille.

Got home this evening and carried on trying to sort out a visit to Ireland in the next couple of weeks, for a much needed holiday.  Finally got my ferry booking sorted out.  Let's hope my arrival at Fishguard for the crossing will be a bit better organised than my recent efforts at Lymington.  But now is no time to rest on any laurels.  I am off out pretty early again tomorrow for a drive up to Cardiff Castle for three days jousting with the Knights of Royal England.  And the weather forecast is not exactly positive.  Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye.

Haylands School, Ryde, Isle of Wight

Good King Hal gets all arty. This is what the exit from Lymington Harbour looks like at just after 5am. Trust me on this. (But it is a nice photo, isn't it?)

Back to Haylands School in Ryde on the Isle of Wight yesterday, exactly a year after my last visit. I had noticed that from checking on-line with the ferry from Lymington to Yarmouth how the prices went up as time got later, so in a fit of some kind of dementia I had booked myself on the 5.10am ferry. What the heck was I thinking? This meant I had to get up at 3am in Crewkerne and be on my way by 3.30am. However, I made it on time and soon me, my car, one other car and about four lorries were slowly slipping out into the dark waters of the Solent. I went up on to what they laughably called a "Sun Deck" and watched the early morning sunrise. I took a few piccies, as you can see above, and also got waved at by a yacht full of what appeared to be young ladies sailing in to Lymington in the weak morning light. I say appeared to be young ladies as they were all clothed head to foot in what appeared to be full survival suits, so they might have been jolly friendly chaps instead. I wandered back inside and sat looking out of the windows as Yarmouth drew closer.

The two cars were let off the ferry after one lorry, but it was a lorry I ended up following all the way to Newport. My sat nav then had a bit of a "mental-mental-chicken-oriental" moment in Newport and for some reason known only to herself, took me down various tiny back roads and housing estates before we emerged once more on the road to Ryde. I found the school down it's tiny side lane, but found it was a good hour and half before the place was likely to burst into life. I needed some petrol, well, to be honest the car did, but I digress. I soon found myself driving into the car park of possibly the largest Tesco store I have ever seen. This place looked like an aircraft hanger. I kept expecting the whole front to swing open and see the prow of the R101 nudge out. I chose to go to Tesco's as I knew their fuel would be the cheapest around (tight-fisted swine that I am), but I had been shocked by just how expensive the fuel on the island was. Anyway, fully fuelled up I headed back to the school and was soon inside and setting up for the day.

Just like last year it was great fun. A really excitable and bright group of year 3's, some charming lovely teachers and teaching assistants, and just a pleasurable day all round. It was also the first time really in 2010 where I felt truly hot and uncomfortable in the costume - must mean summer is a-coming! After a nice lunch and a chat with a really charming lady who's husband works for the National Trust (I urged them both to visit Barrington Court when they get a chance), it was back for the afternoon session. Again much laughter and fun, and then a truly epic jousting tournament, which once more the gents won! This now makes our year-long score very interesting indeed.

GENTLEMEN 19 - 24 LADIES

The next chance the ladies get to pull away again is on May 4th at West Pennard School near Glastonbury.

I drove back to the ferry at Yarmouth and was soon back on the mainland. A fairly bother free trip back to Somerset and I was at home. In the evening I think I was supposed to meet Matthew Applegate at the Duke of York in Shepton Beauchamp for a drink. So I went over. Matthew never appeared, so I wondered if I had got the wrong pub. Perhaps we were going to meet at the Royal Oak in Barrington. I drove over there. Nope, he wasn't there either. I went home, pausing only to enjoy the wonderful friendliness and ambiance of Peejays Fish Bar in Crewkerne. And so to bed. In the words of Jane Austen "blimey, Mr Darcey, my dogs are barking and I am totally knackered." That was a long day.

Brighstone, Isle of Wight

Good King Hal attempting to swap Barrington Court for a jar of chutney, while Matthew Applegate's wife Sue does a very good Tommy Cooper impression. Taken during Chutfest.

Vectis! Proud proud Vectis! Such memories! Childhood holidays in Lake, endless drizzle, kite flying on Culver Cliff and, more recently, staggering back to the mainland after slightly over-doing it in the Yacht Haven during Skandia sponsored Cowes week. Back in April I did my first school visit to the Isle of Wight when I visited Haylands Junior in Ryde. The deputy head that day, a very nice young blond lady, has since moved and is now one of the youngest head teachers in England and is at Brighstone School near Freshwater on the west side of the island. She had recommended me to the teachers of this new school, hence my booking.

I had booked my ferry on-line before half term (which was very pleasant by the way, including various long drives up and down the M4 to Wales and Essex and back again) and was due to catch the 6.45am sailing from Lymington to Yarmouth. I left Crewkerne at about 5.20am but my sat nav said I only had a slim chance of making it to the ferry on time. I did well though and soon after passing Dorchester I was ahead of time, only to be stuck behind a succession of incredibly slow drivers, but I still felt confident I would make it. Wrong! I arrived at the ferry terminal just in time to see my ship slowly easing out into the Solent. I enquired in the office as to the time of the next sailing - 7.45am was the answer. It would have been a lot sooner but they had just that week changed their timetable to the winter sailings, so they don't go as regularly (they should eat more All Bran). I think the expression rhymes with brass poles. I was eventually on the ferry and enjoying the bright morning sunshine as we slid out of the harbour and across the bottle green waters of the Solent.

I soon found the school after a short drive down the island. It was a delightful village school and I was warmly welcomed by the lovely and friendly teachers. I would be talking to a group consisting of years 2, 3 and 4, but in total, less than 50 children. They started off quietly, but by heck, when they got going there was no stopping them. They loved it, laughing, joking and really getting involved. It was a pleasure to talk to them. After a splendid lunch of roast pork followed by apple strudel, I was soon back in the hall for the afternoon session. More laughs, more riotous fun, especially when talking about the stocks. I asked the children what did they think the Tudors would throw at someone in the stocks - one of the answers was "a donkey" which for some reason left me helpless with laughter at the thought of it. The year one's came in to watch the final jousting tournament and it was one of the best for years. The final went to two tie-breakers before the gentlemen finally snatched victory. This now leaves the year long score as:

GENTLEMEN 4 - 8 LADIES

The results are looking more interesting now.

The journey back was dreadful. When I arrived at Yarmouth there was a ferry waiting at the dockside. About half an hour later the ferry was still waiting at the dockside, and so were all of us travellers. Finally we got on board. It was a fairly choppy crossing but we didn't dock in Lymington until nearly smack on 5pm. The traffic home was terrible and I didn't get into the flat at Crewkerne until near 7pm. Very tired. Watched CSKA Moscow very nearly beat the crap out of Manchester United, which was fun - if only they could have hung on. And then to bed, where I slept like a large piece of timber cut from a tree trunk.

Next appearance is on Friday at Canterbury Cathedral in Kent.

A Ticket to Ryde

I had never been abroad to be Henry VIIIth before. Someone said to me that the Isle of Wight wasn't officially abroad - I just pointed out that it was very difficult to walk there. I was booked to appear at Haylands School on the outskirts of Ryde on the Island through a Mr Chubb. He had seen me in action as Henry VIIIth some years ago when he worked at Brookside School in Street near Glastonbury. However, he is a Vectis man, born and bred, and had moved back to the island a couple of years ago - but he remembered me, and had consequently booked me for Haylands School.

I knew it was going to be a long journey down to the Isle of Wight, but it was also a long way down to Lymington where the ferry was. I caught the 6.15am ferry and it was lovely to sit on the viewing deck and cast my eyes over the steely grey waters of the Solent. The sun was smudging it's way to the horizon to my left, making vast silhouettes of the petro-chemical works at Fawley. The orange and pink colours of the delicate sunrise flecked the small waves as we slowly steamed out of the harbour. It was a crisp clear brilliant morning and my reverie was only partially ruined by some slack jawed neanderthal suddenly deciding to play the very loud fruit machine just behind where I was sitting. It was obviously a "Carry on" themed machine as there were lots of Barbara Windsor giggles, Sid James guffaws, Swanee whistle whoops and "ber-doing!!!!!" sound effects that obviously appealed to the mouth breather as he played the damn thing for what seemed a lifetime. We soon docked at Yarmouth and I was on my way. You can't go very far anywhere on the island and I was soon approaching Ryde at a rate of knots. I found the school but, as it was still only about 7.30am, the place was still fully locked up. I had just parked up outside expecting a long wait when a car arrived and the driver got out and unlocked the gates before driving in. I followed. It was the head teacher and he couldn't have been more helpful and charming. Haylands School is a very modern welcoming building with excellent facilities. It has the air of a very happy contented school. I was with the year 3 group for the day and was told by Mr Chubb that they were a very excitable group - and boy they were!

We had a lovely day - tremendous group of children, lovely friendly teachers and assistants, and a very nice lunch to boot. Lots of fun and laughter with the children who also showed a very high level of Tudor knowledge. For the final jousting tournament in the hall we invited the year 4 group to come in and join the spectators which certainly added to the atmosphere in the hall. We nearly blew the roof off the place! A thrilling joust final was won by a very competent ladies team, and we then had a fun teachers race which Mr Chubb's team won!

It was a long drive home and a slow ferry, with intermittent heavy rain and then dazzling sunshine. I didn't get back to Crewkerne until about 7.20pm - I was very tired, but happy. It had been a brilliant day.

Friday I am at Wooton Bassett in Wiltshire during the day and then have a mad dash over to Hever Castle in Kent for my first ever work there in the evening. Smashing!