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.

Wassail, Snow and Tiverton, in that order...

Good King Hal, as he looks every night in his dreams, scratching his arse with a bloody big sword.  As you do.

The annual Wassail at Barrington Court has undergone something of a change in recent years.  In the past it was open to the public and was quite a big event, with drumming bands, mummers plays and lots of entertainment... and Morris dancers, still you can't have everything.  However, some of the recent evenings have been less than successful, mostly due to dreadful wet weather, but also with the National Trust management showing about as much enthusiasm for promoting the event as your regular vegan shows when offered a tour of a local abattoir.  So this year, Matthew Applegate, the much venerated Visitor Services Manager at Barrington decided to go for a small, intimate, invite only evening, and his plans paid dividends.  The weather on the evening of the 17th was far better than it had been for some years.  It was dry for a start, piercingly cold and the threatened snow was at least six hours away. 

Matthew had set up an area by the garages out the back of Strode House (the Jacobean pile right next to Barrington Court) and there was a brazier blazing away and adding warmth and welcome.  From his own garage Matthew and his lovely wife Sue were serving warm mulled cider, normal cider, apple juice for the kids, and home made cider apple cake, which was made with Matthew's own fair hands and was delicious.  About 30 people had been invited and it was lovely to see such people as Jo and Blue Walshe from Shepton Beauchamp post office, and Paul Jessop and his fiancee, the lovely Marion Lewis both from Barrington Pottery.  We began the evening with me doing a reading of The Gloucestershire Wassail, followed by Matthew's friend, the aptly named Dick who led us in a singing of "Here We Come a-Wassailing" and the "Somerset Wassail" songs.  After this and a fair bit more cider we then processed round to the orchard and gathered under one of the mature apple trees.  Here Dick poured cider over the roots to feed the tree, cider soaked toast was placed in the branches to encourage birds into the tree, and then we all made a load of noise, hollering shouting and whooping, followed by two loud blasts from a shotgun, to help scare away the evil spirits that might ruin the cider harvest.  Wonderfully pagan and great fun.  We then staggered back to the welcome warmth of the brazier.  Matthew, bedecked in his fine slightly grotty looking bowler hat, was by now very merry indeed, and had noticed that the wood supplies for the brazier had grown low, and he was much vexed by this.  He disappeared for a while, before returning with an almost comically long lump of wood in hand, whilst brandishing a huge saw in the other hand.  Several people approached him and suggested with the amount of cider that had been imbibed, that the introduction of very sharp sawing implements might not be the best idea ever hatched.  I left shortly after this, but heard nothing of any lost limbs or fingers.

Sometime over the next few hours, a snow white blanket descended on Somerset and many other south western areas.  I awoke on the Friday morning to find Crewkerne submerged beneath a heavy fall of snow.  Luckily I had no where really to go that weekend, and so I just battened down the hatches and continued to check the wine levels in my drinks cabinet.  They were fine, but getting gradually lower.  Not sure why...

This morning saw me up and out the door bright and early for a trek down to Devon and another annual visit to Blundell's Prep School in Tiverton.  I have always enjoyed my visits to this school, and this year was no different.  The sainted, and wonderfully named Stef Jeffs is long gone, and so to sadly is former Somerset opening batsman Nick Folland, so I can't pick his brains any more about the true horrors of facing Curtley Ambrose on a "bit of a sticky".  Instead I was in the safe hands of the very welcoming Steve Hirst, dressed again as a sort of psychedelic jester.  We had a great day with a lovely group of kids, about 30 of them, all in brilliant costumes.  One young lad was in an executioners costume that his mother had made, and it was of such high quality that many a full time re-enactor would have been proud to wear it.  Well done, Mum!  The morning shot past rapidly amidst much laughs and Tudor nonsense.  After a fine lunch of meat balls and rice, we were back in the hall for a grand joust finale.  This was quiet to begin with, but like a snow ball running down hill, it started to pick up momentum, and by the final it was quite deafening.  The final itself was a one-sided affair, where a much fancied ladies team was trounced by the gents.  This brings our score for the year to:

GENTLEMEN 10 - 13 LADIES

So there IS some hope for the lads after all.

It is another local gig tomorrow with another return visit to a lovely school - Birchfield Junior in Yeovil.  I always look forward to this day as well, so lets hope we have a good one.

Oh, and the picture at the top of this blog - it isn't me at all silly!  I knew that all the way through.  It's actually my identical twin brother.  Handsome devil...

Jubilee Day - Party and Walkabout

Above, a desperate attempt to discover if Cheryl Cole actually hit any right notes during her duet with Gary Barlow's stubble at the Queen's Jubilee knees up in the Mall.  Probably not.

Ah, what a day!  I had been asked some time ago, to appear in the village of Shepton Beauchamp near Ilminster for their children's street party to celebrate the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.  And today was that day.  And not content with doing that, I was also invited to then go to Barrington Court for a Right Royal perambulation round their grounds afterwards.  Smashing.

On arriving in Shepton Beauchamp the first thing you discovered was a road block stopping people from roaring through the middle of the village and mowing down vast hoards of children as they stuffed their faces with sandwiches.  I was allowed through so that I could get changed and begin my wanderings.  The atmosphere was great amongst the villagers - Shepton  is such a friendly place, I really miss living there (I was resident from 1999 to 2003) but it was good to see so many old familiar faces.  Just before the children were to begin their lunch I was handed a glass of very strong scrumpy and a bowl of Thai green curry - well, it would have been rude to refuse, so I gulped down both which were fabulous.  We then moved to the tower of the church for the launching of parachute wearing teddy bears.  Now this may not sound the most exciting thing ever, but it kept the entire crowd entertained for nearly 20 minutes.  There were gasps of wonder as some bears floated serenely to the ground, there were cries of laughter when some very haphazard descents were made, and there was even screams and sympathetic "aaahs" when one or two parachutes failed to open and the poor bear beneath plummeted to a speedy reunion with Mother Earth.  One poor bear got halfway down and then snagged on the lower part of the church tower, which elicited the largest sympathetic noise of the day!

The children then sat down for their feast.  I bellowed out a welcome to one and all and got three heart cheers for the Queen's 60th anniversary.  Great stuff.  But then I had to move on and head for Barrington Court.  As Barrington is so close to Shepton I decided to leave my tights on under my trousers for this short jaunt there.  As I was driving it suddenly dawned on me how awful it would be if I was in a fatal accident at this point.  The Police, on recovering my body would find me with a pair of white tights on below my normal clothes.  They would obviously suspect  that I was a Conservative MP.  I can imagine the knock on the door my parents would get.  "Mr and Mrs Farley?  We have some grave news for you I'm afraid... your son has been in an accident, but you should have seen what he had on under his trousers.  It was disgusting..."

Barrington Court was packed when I arrived, which was good to see.  I had a great time wandering the grounds, meeting and greeting people.  Towards the end of the afternoon the sun even began to force its way out from behind the clouds.  It was so nice to see so many people there and having a lovely time.  Towards the end of my two hour stint, Matthew Applegate found me and offered me a cup of tea.  So I ended the afternoon sitting in Matthew's office supping a much needed and wonderful cuppa.  So all in all a great way to spend the Bank Holiday Jubilee Monday, and the fun doesn't stop there.  I am off to Sudeley Castle again tomorrow to chase the Tudor Roses round the grounds again, and then on Wednesday I am up at the crack of dawn to drive over to Leeds Castle in Kent for another week of jousting.  And funnily enough I am looking forward to it!

Confessions of a Sexey Model. (You'll understand...)

Breakfast TV on Tudor Vision.  Joining Henry and Liz on the sofa this morning will be lovable brain box from Holland - Erasmus; chum of the King - Robert Aske; and Perkin Warbeck - crazy name, crazy guy!  Stay tuned.

The middle of last week found me down in Folkestone in Kent to begin with, having dinner and meeting with my new brilliant agent, the legendary Michelle Coda.  I stayed the night with her and her other half Matt, and Michelle's little daughter, Victoria.  In the evening her parents Frank and Debbie came over and much wine was drunk and food eaten, which always seems to happen when Frank and Debbie Coda are on the scene.  I began the long drive back to Somerset on the Thursday lunchtime, but this time with one passenger missing - my poor old sat nav, the one dubbed originally Doris II by me, but later and more poetically Kanuna by my son James, she is no more.  Her power supply has broken and really I was just looking for a good excuse to get rid of her!  She had never been that good to be honest.  She can find easy addresses brilliantly - if you want 57 Hannover Street in Oldham or something, she can take you straight there.  But ask her to find some house in the middle of nowhere - hopeless.  You'd key in the post code for Little Rustic Farm, near Wurzel Village in Devon and she'd say "Well, I can't find that address, but I can find Rustic Road slap bang in the middle of Exeter, would you like to go there instead?" which is about as helpful as finding a man who is drowning and asking him to hold your anvil.  So Friday's appearance back at the wonderful Hugh Sexey Middle School in Blackford near Wedmore would have to begin with me finding the school manually.  I printed out directions from Google Maps and felt confident I could find the place the following morning.

Twit.  Total and utter twit.  Of course I wouldn't be able to find it with printed out directions from Google Maps.  I couldn't even find it with Kanuna in previous years.  Somehow, through luck more than judgement, I found myself in the village of Blackford and asked a very nice lady taking her dog for a walk where I could find Hugh Sexey School - a question which, asked in any other village in the UK would have probably resulted in a slapped face for me.  So here I was back at this lovely school, surrounded as ever but a veritable bevy of beautiful teachers.  It seems a pre-requisite to work at this school is you have to be female and attractive.  And I am not complaining!  Always makes my visits more fun for me!

Well, we had a great morning - it was a big group of about 100 children I suppose, and all of them in fantastic costumes.  Loads of laughs in the morning, and some really sound and impressive Tudor knowledge displayed by the children.  We started a little late because of a morning assembly in the hall, but we soon caught up.    For lunch the children had all brought in packed lunches, and as in previous years I was asked to judge which I thought were the most authentically Tudor of the foods.  One little girl had a yogurt frube drink and a chocolate bar and was surprised when I told her they weren't terribly authentic.  I was treated to a lovely lunch of pasta bolognese, followed by a chocolate cake in custard.  Terribly healthy!  I also shared a bottle of red grape Schloer with the teachers, with us all pretending it was red wine - but it was obvious it wasn't as we all went back to work after lunch!

The afternoon was loud and fun, culminating in yet another brilliant Jousting tournament, but this one ended in that rarest of occurrences - a win for the Gents!  This makes the updated score:

GENTLEMEN 15 - 26 LADIES

Still a big lead for the ladies, but the gents are at least hanging in there. We finally finished with some photos with the group, and a parade of the children's costumes with me picking the best.  I was absolutely cream crackered by the time it was for me to pick my way home.  But any ideas I had of a quiet lazy evening snoozing on the sofa, well, I could forget all that.

You may remember I modelled for the Shepton Beauchamp art group recently, in my full Henry gear, and I was heading back there for a return visit by popular demand!  I wore a different outfit from my previous posings and we had the usual banter and laughs with the ladies there present.  A very pleasant evening, and proof, if you ever wanted it, that not only Lily Cole is a "model" in this family.  So now you understand the title of the blog - Sexey Model?  Geddit?  Oh never mind...

I have purchased a new sat nav today - not sure of her name yet.  Any suggestions from readers of this blog?  She will first be used "in anger" on Bank Holiday Monday when I am back at Sudeley Castle in Winchcombe in Gloucestershire for another Tudor "fun" day. Looking forward to seeing my Queen's again as the Tudor Roses will be out in force again.  Smashing!

Henry Day at Barrington Court

Barrington Court - a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very nice place.

This is the day Matthew Applegate and I had been planning and looking forward to for quite some time. The first of the big Henry VIII Days at Barrington Court. We were expecting about 60-70 children from the combined schools of Barrington, Ilton and Shepton Beauchamp, but instead we got over 100! Some had come in costumes which were great, others were in their brightly coloured school uniforms. There were familiar faces - Matthew's two daughters, Hannah and Isobel, plus my friends from Kingstone, Ali and Ian's daughter, Amy who goes to the Shepton Beauchamp School. Matthew, his assistant Tamsin, and various other volunteers at Barrington worked their socks off in the morning getting the extra chairs in the kitchen where I was going to do the majority of my presentation. We could not have done the day without them.

We were running the day for two reasons - one, to see if the Henry VIII Days that I do in school could be done at Barrington Court as well, which I think we proved that they could. And secondly, to get some publicity for future Henry VIII Days, to which end I had contacted the Western Gazette, the Chard and Ilminster News, View from Crewkerne Newspaper, BBC Somerset and even Points West, the local BBC Television News. The TV News people had told me that our event was in their diary and that unless something significant occurred there was a good chance they would come and cover it. Well, I am assuming Mrs Trubshaw of Radstock ran out of cat food, or Mrs Osborne turned her ankle over in the High Street in Frome as we saw not a glimpse of the BBC today! They missed a great day.

We had great fun in the morning though I think some of the really young children from the schools were a bit too young for the opening talk and some struggled to concentrate on the whole thing. But the vast majority of the children were fantastic! After a nice relaxing lunch we had a fun session with the stocks in the kitchen, and then had an unbelievably noisy jousting session in the main hall. It was a rip roaring affair with noise, shouting and the bizarre feeling of the sprung dance floor in the hall literally bouncing up and down with the excitement of the children. A gents team combining the talents of all the schools sauntered to a very classy victory! This added to our annual score now makes it:

GENTLEMEN 23 - 27 LADIES

The day finished and I bade the children farewell at the main door of the Court House. Matthew Applegate and Tamsin came and stood next to me.

"How the hell do you do that every day?" Asked Matthew. I just do, I suppose! I've got used to it over the previous six years. But each and every day is different and fun, which is why it never becomes a chore. So if any teachers out there fancy the idea of having a really amazing Tudor Day with Henry VIII for their Key Stage 2 Pupils in the surroundings of Barrington Court House then either contact me through my website of www.goodkinghal.co.uk or contact Matthew Applegate, Visitor Services Manager at Barrington Court on 01460 243124.

Death of an English Pub

I went out for a beer with Matthew Applegate this evening. We do this quite often, discussing future events at Barrington Court and just having a good chuckle or two. Tonight was going to be one of our usual evenings, but turned out a bit different. We were due to meet at our usual pub, the delightful Duke of York in Shepton Beauchamp but when we arrived there the car park was full to bursting and the place was packed. So I drove us both over to East Lambrook and the Rose and Crown there. This is a very "nice" pub, all dining facilities and expensive beer. But it was generally quite busy. I managed to inflame the wrath of the landlady when I asked for the sparkler to be taken off the beer pump. (Sparklers are put on to real ale beer taps to force air into the beer and give it a foaming head - but it also makes the beer go like that execrable John Smith's Smooth Flow crap, so beloved of Northern Beer drinkers. I wanted a pint of beer, not something I could wash my socks in). Apparently me asking her to take the sparkler off the beer tap appeared to be the social equivalent of me leaning over the counter, slipping a £20 note down her bra and asking her for a lap dance. She started to lecture us about beer and the pub trade, and went on and on and on. This woman barely paused for breath. Eventually after a couple of beers we'd had enough and we headed back to the car. This time we went to the Royal Oak at Barrington. What a sad sight. This is a pub that is dying, slowly and obviously. Punch, the group that owns the pub, are trying to sell it and there is a big over-bearing "FOR SALE" sign on the outside. There is a temporary manager in the place, running it for the owners. When Matthew and I got in there, there were two men having a pint in the main bar, two lads playing pool out the back, plus us two. And that was it. Both the other pubs we had seen that evening (and all in the locality) were very busy, but the Oak was like the Marie Celeste. The two men having pints finished and were gone, and the lads playing pool followed soon afterwards. Before 10pm Matt and I were the only people in the place. Now the Oak could be a fabulous pub - Barrington is a beautiful chocolate box English thatched cottage village with the added attraction of Barrington Court being in the middle of it. But the Oak just doesn't seem to work - it has attracted a bad reputation, and in the pub business that is very difficult to lose. What would be ideal is a consortium of local people to club together and buy out the pub and run it properly as a good old fashioned local public house. Are there any takers out there to help save a small part of our English heritage? It would be nice if there was.

Birthday Party and Friends (the school, not the sickly American sit-com)

(left) Good King Hal waiting for his daughter to finish on the throne. Then it's his turn. Damn those scallops!

This weekend just gone was fabulous. On the Friday night, Amanda and James drove down from Essex and came and stayed with me for the evening. (We had the added excitement of a next door neighbour's motorhome exploding in the wee small hours and frying all my telephone lines - I think the neighbours were just trying to let my Basildon based wife feel at home! Sorry dear, I'll get my coat...) Then on Saturday it was time for my birthday party! The evening was spent at the very fine Duke of York pub in Shepton Beauchamp near Ilminster. Sitting down for dinner was myself, Amanda, James, my parents, my sister Cathy and her husband Julian from Kent, friends Jo and Pete Flanagan, Matthew and Sue Applegate, Tris and Jane Pinkney, and Alison Barling and her other half Ian Thomas. A splendid time seemed to be had by all. James was so good all evening, chatting, playing, being cute, but most of the time entranced by his Nintendo DS game! Lovely food and drink was had (I had scallops to begin with and then a fine gammon steak) and lots of fun and laughter. A very nice way to celebrate my 43rd birthday!

On the Sunday I drove myself and James back to Essex (Amanda made her own way) as on the Monday I was to appear at Friends School in Saffron Walden. I headed out bright and early on the morning, and attempted to avoid the M25 and M11, which seemed like a good idea. It was, for most of the way, but I did get held up in a couple of spots, particularly one where a head on crash had just occurred before I got there. Adding to my fun was that my windscreen washers ran out of water just after I set off and what with the low sun and spray from the road I was soon virtually driving in braille. I arrived at the school but couldn't get round to the "scout hut" hall we always use on my normal route, so I had to go in through a rear entrance with a code for the padlock given to me by the office. It didn't work. In the end I had to park in a crappy mud field what seemed like about half a mile from the scout hut and squish and slide across this carrying the props in. The group today was only 11 children, and small groups are notoriously hard to entertain. But this group were pretty cool and laughed and joined in at all the right moments. Lunch in the grand hall was as good as it always is at Friends School - a quorn sweet and sour served with rice and prawn crackers. Delicious!

Back to the scout hut for a slightly truncated afternoon session (we were evicted from the hall by a ballet class at about 2.30pm). The jousting was great fun and surprisingly loud for such a small group. And even though there were only three girls in the whole group, I bet you can't guess who won the tournament? Yup, the ladies stormed to a remarkable victory. This now makes our ongoing year score:

GENTLEMEN 12 - 19 LADIES

They are starting to get away from you gents! I mostly have a week of leisure ahead, doing some work for United FM, the local radio group. I seem to have managed to sort out an interview with Andy Partridge, lead singer of XTC and an all time hero of mine to be recorded for broadcast, something I am totally chuffed about! Next week I am off to Blandford Camp and Wimborne in Dorset for two school visits, but the filming for the TV documentary has been postponed AGAIN. I have a feeling this might never happen now. However, I will keep you posted.

Two Re-visits.

It was back to school for me. After the Christmas hiatus and a few other bits and pieces it was finally back to the usual routine of school visits for me this week. On Monday I was off to Dean Close Prep School in Cheltenham for my fourth annual visit there. It was lovely to be back - a really nice pleasant school, just a shame about the weather driving up there. The sky was Bible black for the most, and you add in loads of rain and road spray and you'll find it was not a fun jaunt up the old M5. However, I was warmly welcomed as ever and the children were hilarious. We had a fun day, a fantastic lunch (during which I was besieged by young fans as I tried to eat my dinner!) which was capped off with Eton Mess! WOW! I haven't had Eton Mess in years and it was lovely! It still looks like an accident on a plate, but who cares. The jousting was a fun encounter which the gents just managed to win from a good ladies team. I drove him in slightly better conditions and in the evening went for a beer with Matthew Applegate over at the Duke of York pub in Shepton Beauchamp, primarily to discuss this weekend's forthcoming Wassail, but mostly just for a beer!

I drove up to Essex on the Tuesday and collected James from school. The evening was spent at leisure with both James and Amanda. On the Wednesday I was back at Wickford Junior which is one of my favourites in Essex! You are guaranteed great children, lovely teachers, good lunch and a laugh all round, and they didn't disappoint again! We had a fabulous day - so many laughs I can't even begin to list them all for you. The jousting was again of a really high standard with this time the ladies coming through for a very impressive win. The evening followed spent with Amanda and James, accompanied by a nice big take away pizza! Amanda and I watched "Gavin and Stacey" on DVD and so to bed.

I am back in Somerset now preparing for tomorrow when I am back for a third visit to Blundell's Preparatory School in Tiverton in Devon. And don't forget the Wassail at Barrington Court on Saturday! Don't miss it!