Owing to a late call off by a booked artist, the organisers at St Neots had asked if we would fill in and do a 40 minute showcase slot. This gave us the chance to again share the evening with Paul Cherrington and Pamela Ward, who had supported us wonderfully at Baldock the previous month.

It was lovely to hear them again and, with a bit more time available to them, they did an excellent and extended set bringing a lot more of Pamela's bluesy side to the fore. Excellent guitar work from Paul, as always.

We did an extended set with some new material. This included The Bite and some Asturian dance music, in preparation for our Basque celebration event planned for the end of the week.

It is always gratifying to hear people telling each other on the way out(rather than us) that they had had a splendid evening.

We managed to have a longer chat with organiser Roger than we had managed before, which was very pleasant. We are hopeful of doing more with the St Neots club - we have certainly enjoyed being there and, I am pleased to say, they seem to have enjoyed having us there.

A long awaited return to St Neots Folk Club for us. Indeed, as it turned out, this was to be the first of two visits in quick succession.

We concentrated on letting Roger and Patti and the regulars at the club hear how our repetoire had changed since we were last with them. We did Three Bonny Ships, Solo Poor Tres Meses and Anada Pa Julia, and they were all very well received.

The main act was the American singer Debra Cowan, accompanied by the amazing Pete Smith on guitar - now that's what I call Taylor guitars! Hamish Currie was also there, getting a feel for the place ahead of his full spot there a few weeks later.

A very pleasant evening which set up our return visit very nicely.

Thanks to the continuing support of Alan and Sue Hewson, we made a very pleasant and welcome return to the Mad Nanny! Folk Club at the Orange Tree in Baldock for a full spot. We had a modest but very supportive turnout including a number of our friends from St Albans and nearby. So, it was a nice cosy atmosphere - which the excellent Orange Tree bar helps to generate.

It was nice to again get the chance to play two forty minute slots - we find it really helps in getting us 'into the groove'. So we had chance to introduce some more material into the full set - including Solo Por Tres Meses, the Flower of Magherally and a revamped version of Sr martin D'Auray - which I am pleased to say some of the club's regulars had actually visited in Brittany.

It was also a good chance for us to try and be a bit more expansive in describing the songs. Rob and I concluded some time ago that the music is developing well and it is being well received by the audience but, somehow, we weren't connecting with the audience on a personal basis as much as we could. Now, neither of us would ever be stand up comics and patter-merchants but both of us make presentations and work extensively with people in our day jobs, so we should be able to make the spaces between the songs and tunes as engaging as the music itself. So, we said a good deal more about the songs and tunes this time and felt it made for a much more rounded performance - and the feedback seemed to concur. Alan and Sue were very complimentary afterwards and that means a lot to us.

We were supported by an excellent duo from the St Neots club, Paul Cherrington & Pamela Ward who write some very touching songs and deliver them very elegantly - good singing and lovely guitar support. We hope to see them again at St Neots and they said they would make contact for us with Mike Blair at the Bedford Folk Club - a venue we would like to play.

The excellent Malcolm Hobbs also did a brief set. we both love Malcolm's choice of material and his voice. He is also so supportive and friendly towards us - much appreciated.

As we turn to the Easter break, we will focus on bringing on some more material. We have been asked by Baldock and Letchworth to do a support on June 11th, which should be a good catalyst for bringing some new material that is currently 'simmering under' into the repertoire. We have another 3 or 4 French songs close to bringing forward.

Other than that we are joining Alan and Sue, as a Tam Lin line up at the memorial festival for the late Paul Gunningham - so we will be rehearsing further for that in the coming week. I am pleased to report that tickets for the festival are going well.

A very nice return to the excellent Readifolk Club in The Gardener's Arms in Reading. Rob and I had very much enjoyed our two visits to Readifolk and were happy to return and do a support slot. This allowed us to again play our new composition, 'Solo Por Tres Meses' and we also introduced The Flower of Magherally into the reperrtoire for the first time. Some excellent floor singers and a couple of good songs from MC Malcolm provided the rest of the support for the evening with Ceri Rhys Matthews and Christine Cooper providing the main act for the evening. Two really friendly people playing excellent Welsh tunes on both flute, bagpipes and fiddle, with some nice songs as well. It was both a pleasure and an education to be in the audience for the evening.

The trip to Reading allowed us to see our great friends Joe and Mandy again - Joe is only a whisker away from being our official photographer, alongside Rob's partner. Sadly, neither of them can put me any more hair on this balding pate of mine. Ho hum.

Next stop for us is Baldock and Letchworth later this month where we are doing a full spot later this month. The repertoire is continuing to build and strengthen and, with a welcoming club like Alan and Sue Hewson run, it couldn't be better to try some new material out. We will also be taking a contingent of friends from St Albans. So, it should be a good night.

After a period of rehearsal and holidays, it was good to be back on the road as na-mara. Although we have a support slot coming up in Cambridge in the not too distant future, we took no persuading to accept the invitation to come and join the regular singers night at the Cambridge Folk Club. We are always very well received and looked after there -so the hours trip is always made very worthwhile.

As we have come to expect at Cambridge, there was a full night of highly talented performers (Andrew Noyes from Coupe de Gras, Cruel Folk, the Ooze Brothers, The Free Range Chickens and many more) and I'm pleased to report that we acquitted ourselves well and the first public outing of our new song Solo Por Tres Meses was very warmly and sympathetically received.

Things will start to pick up gig-wise. We are at Reading Folk Club next Sunday - which will be a welcome return to another very friendly club. The full details of future na-mara bookings are on our My Space site at www.myspace.com/namaramusic

But we also remain very active with our great friends in Tam Lin. Barn dances, a forthcoming folk club booking in Birmingham and even a 'ho-down' last weekend are keeping the callouses hard on the fingers and the eye-lids heavy in the morning. All great fun.

Our final current booking of this short 'season' was to support Bill Whaley and Dave Fletcher, at the Redbourn Folk Club.

Redbourn is a very friendly club run by Jan Strapp who plays hammer dulcimer beautifully. We had been along to the club in our early, more nervous days, and had been very encouraged and pleased to be invited back to do this support role. Thankfully, having had a couple of good outings recently, and concentrating on a relatively fixed set for a while, we felt much more confident and strong this time around, and I think, did a very good set. The evidence for this is that Jan has intimated getting us back for a full spot at the club in 2008, which is really gratifying and indicates to us the progress we are making - so, thanks to Jan for that.

We also had the chance to meet Bill Whaley and Dave Fletcher. I confess I didn't know their music before but will listen out for them from now on. Excellent songs, modern and traditional, voice (and what a voice Dave has!) and squeeze boxes of various sorts - including an electric concertina that can do anything and a harmonium. Bill exhibits a very dry humour and gruff exterior when on stage but is, as is obvious to all really, a very friendly bloke indeed, as is Dave.

We were accompanied by our friend Robert who was able to give us a bit of a critical review, which is what we like to have. And, of course, the benefit of Redbourn for us is that it is 10 minutes and home.

This was the first of two support slots in quick succession. Here, with our good friends at the Baldock and Letchworth Club (which given our links to Alan and Sue Hewson of Tam Lin and Millrace) feels increasingly like a home club for us, we were supporting the Seattle-based pairing of Pint and Dale. Rob's oldest son came along to give us moral support, and help carry the increasing number of instruments we seem to be playing these days.

The format at B&L is that the support act starts the evening - which is nice because it means you can relax and really enjoy the main act and maybe even have drink after performing.

Pint and Dale play a great array of mainly nautically themed music. Pint is a great guitarist, sporting a Thompson-esque beret, Dale plays an array of instruments, including the Hurdy Gurdy. In their earlier days, they used to do French music, clearly something close to our heart - but it seems that has dropped out of their repertoire. But they did a great session and were very friendly people to meet.

Not long after the exhilaration of playing at Cambridge, we had an early morning, up and at 'em trip back eastwards to Suffolk - the furthest east we've played - to the small and very beautiful village of Laxfield.

Some 450 years ago, a Protestant preacher was martyred in Laxfield and, as the name suggests, this event is there to promote religious and philosophical tolerance - which seems the right thing for us to be supporting. Naturally, it also has a Tudor flavour.

Na-mara had been recommended to the organisers to play the festival by an old friend of ours, Bob Kidby of the excellent London-based jazz combo Clarence and the Regents. We had done some charity work with them in London in recent years and we know the band well. So, we set off to have lunch with Bob and the rest of the band, after meeting up with our great friend Tony Garrity, Suffolk's shyest bodhran player. We were to play a couple of 40 minute slots in the afternoon in the acoustic tent, as the crowds were milling through and around, to be followed by a thirty minute slot on the main stage in the big tent before Clarence and the Regents began.

The event, skilfully put together by Simon Gallo - an events organiser based in Laxfield and doing probably a thankless task, gratis -was an excellent day out. The weather was great. Our afternoon sessions were, in a way, live rehearsal. People passed by, listened for a few numbers, took the kids for an ice-cream, wandered on; that sort of thing. Very nice; no pressure - adn it showed, we did a nice couple of sets. We interspersed with a professional band of Tudor musicians, the delightful Passo mezzo - playing weird and wonderful Tudor instruments, in Tudor costume, to very great effect! My coat might have looked as though it had been around from Tudor times, but I can confirm it was modern really.

We then left Laxfield after the afternoon session for a bit of a rest before the evening performance - we are getting on a bit now you know.

When we returned to set up for the main stage, we found that the organisers had put an itinerary together of local young adults rock bands - to get the evening really going. So, picture two folkies of a certain age, watching with some alarm at the prospect of following some excellent young rock bands pounding away to a mosh pit full of their friends yelling and shouting. "Hmm, I bet this lot like a sea shanty or two" was not a thought that came to mind. Thankfully, when it came our turn to go on, there was a ten minute break while the roadies set up the equipment for Clarence and the Regents. In that time, the youngsters drifted off to the darker corners of the village to do what youngsters have done at village fairs for centuries (if folk songs are to be believed!), and a new audience filtered into the main tent. However, Rob and I decided that this was still not the place for slow and tearful ballads; rather, we should rip it up a bit with some fast Asturian tunes and some of our faster songs...and it worked well. We even had bits of the audience out dancing and jigging around. It all went down very well. Simon and Bob were really happy with the set and we got some excellent feedback from Tony - who, in the end, we couldn't persuade to come and join us.

So, we went and had a complementary burger - we live the high life you know - and watched the superb Sally from Clarence and Regents get the crowd going and then we turned for the long journey home. What a great day - we made a lot of new friends, saw some old friends and had a wonderful day out - I can't think of a better reason to do this stuff, can you?

Rob and I have been back from holidays for a few weeks and getting back up to speed again. The early rehearsals revealed the benefits of a restful holiday and we had some lovely sessions. Occasionally, like pre-season friendlies for football teams, we also had a couple of clumsy sessions. But, we had our first outing since returning last night - a showcase session at Cambridge Folk Club. The feedback on our contribution to a typically varied and talented Cambridge evening, was very good indeed. Ably looked after by Doc Roscoe, who is such a good sound technician, we were sandwiched in between George Breakfast, a very talented singer-songwriter obviously very well known and liked by the club members, and Grandpa George's Jumping Fleas, a very entertaining four-piece ukelele band.

We decided that we would focus on French songs and Asturian tunes, and they went down really well. This meant that we could introduce some new material St Martin D'Auray - from the singing of Marc Robine - When I Took My Horse to Water - from the singing of Gabriel Yacoub. We also played our new song, The Bite, about the British volunteers in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Later comments from audience members picked all of these out as highlights which is immensely gratifying. Again, the Cambridge Folk Club maintained its reputation in our eyes for quality music and a great welcome.

Post gig curry was then sought but our searches proved that, when searching a good Tarka Dall at close on midnight, if a restaurant is open, go there. Both of us thought we knew where a curry house was on the way home but then couldn't find it. A kindly waiter at a Baldock curry house couldn't persuade his chef to rustle something up - so, it was a slice of toast and marmite, then bed. Despite having a bladder like a camel, carrying two pints of Newcastle Brown all the way home made for a stressful last few miles.

The Cambridge evening and response has really encouraged both of us that we are going in the right direction - and we have had a verbal offer of a support slot in 2008 - and this has really energised us. Both of us have been working different new projects forward today.

 As Rob noted on the way home, the na-mara 'spring tour' had come to a close (I don't think the tour T-shirts can take any more venues, and the roadies are getting a bit tired. The Pan Technicon needs to go in for a service anyway.) So, we are taking a well earned rest for a few weeks - which will give us both chance to recharge batteries (and work up some new stuff).

St Neots was a very nice place to end up at. We liked playing at St Neots very much indeed. Patti and Roger who ran the evening were extremely welcoming. The venue has I think been restored from a more dubious glory earlier in the year - I think the pub in which the club operates had been closed down earlier in the year following a drugs bust, but had reopened and been cleaned up and, indeed, is in for further refurbishment later this year.

We had a night of 20 minute slots for around half a dozen acts. This gave everyone time to showcase what they could do and, without any doubt, there is a lot of talent going to that particular club. Ross, from Barton Le Clay, with friends Malcolm and Derek did some excellent sea-shanties and one of Ross' songs really got everyone going. Great to see three of the new friends we are making in Herts and Beds performing together. We have seen them all perform solo before, but this was great to see them as a unit.

Being on the M1 the club gets occasional visitors who are travelling with work and (sorry didn't get his name - but it wasn't Brian - a "traveller in plastics, not rubber") there was a very fine and funny mandolin player doing just that. We kicked off the second half and I think did 20 minutes of good stuff - the audience were very appreciative at least.

The evening was finished off by a very fine musical duo called Pillowfish, (cittern and violin/viola) who had driven down from York to perform that evening. We would like to wish them every fortune in getting gigs.

Rob tells me that we are to be invited back to do a further slot at the club later in the year and, as our most northerly outpost to date, we would be very pleased to do so.

So, Rob and I have a number of slots already pencilled in for the Autumn and when we are back form holidays and the like we will sit down and work out what else we would like to try and do in 2007. We are certainly building up a new repertoire with the French and Spanish material and 2008 might be time to go back into the studio and record some of it.