We have been continuing to entertain with Tam Lin at various events around Hertfordshire, but on the 12th we made our first trip to Bishops Stortford Folk Club. Friends of friends we had met at our Welwyn gig earlier in the year had suggested that we get in touch with my namesake, the redoubtable Jon McNamara, over at Bishops Stortford, about coming and doing a spot.

After a very entertaining exchange of e-mails, I got to meet the very entertaining Mr McNamara at last. The club is in the vestry of one of the towns churches, and a very nice venue it was -with a very nice bar too. The club offered a mix of music hall songs from Jon, some really excellent penny whistle playing, singers young and old, and some poetry. A very pleasant evening with people who enjoy good music and have a wicked sense of humour.

In flight entertainment there and back was my newly acquired Tejedor album, one directed by Phil Cunningham who plays on the album. Believe me, seek this band out - they are excellent

-A really busy weekend of music. Rob and I have been doing a lot of work with Tam Lin recently, entertaining at barn dances and the like. So, Thursday was a rehearsal and Saturday was a ceilidh. But on the Friday, we were given a huge honour, namely, to finish the evening at the Cambridge Folk Club.

I think as I have said elsewhere in this blog, Cambridge is a really excellent club. Extremely welcoming, with great floor acts and all done with a lovely sense of humour. Again, we were assisted right royally by the legendary Doc Houston who organised the p.a. very well for us and, being cheeky and seeing her in the club, I put in a request for Karen Johnson to sing Scribbled in Chalk by Karine Polwart - which she did, plus a Clive Gregson song as well. Karen is a great singer and it was a thril to hear her perform again. However, there were also some wonderful guitarists playing that night as well. So, to be asked to finish the night off was a buzz and a half.

I think we acquitted ourselves very well. It took us a couple of numbers to get into our stride and then we were rocking by the end. We continue to weave new material into the repertoire - including the Danza Prima from Tejedor - but, by and large, we stayed with material that we have been playing a lot recently because we wanted Cambridge to hear us doing what we do well.

We next play Cambridge on the 14th September when we are one of the featured bands there. It will be a great pleasure to return. However, next time, I will take a bottle opener with me. We don't dirnk when we play, but whoever isn't driving does when we're finished. Playing last rather puts the kibosh on that - so, in those circumstances, when I am passenger I usually take a couple of bottles of Innes and Gunn (if you haven't tried it, you must......except leave some for me..) with me. So, there I am, settling back into Rob's car for the return journey, slavvering like one of Pavlov's dogs at the thought of a nice drop - only to find that I'd left the bottle opener at home. Needless to say, necessity was the mother of invention and eventually, after ten minutes wrestling, the top flew off and the prize was mine! Somehow, the second was much easier to open, and (dear reader) the journey home simply flew by.

We had our very good friends over from Reading this weekend. The two wives and two daughters took themselves off to Hyde Park to see Crowded House whilst the two husbands and sons joined Rob and went to Barton Le Clay - which is where the real action was!

Ross was raising money for a new village hall in Barton and had asked a lot of his friends along to do a session.

Joe and Alex, our friends from Reading agreed to come along - Joe is rapidly becoming our official photographer and he was taking arty shots throughout the 30 minute slot. The two boys seemed rather bemused by the whole proceedings but, with both of them being budding guitarists were very content to watch closely. We gave The Bite another run out.

It was good to see a lot of familiar faces supporting Ross. John Breeze did his usual excellent sessions - but then it was time for us to get the boys home. As we have remarked in previous blog entries, we don't have a great deal of luck on the motorways after gigs. This was the grandaddy of them all. We left Barton around 8.45pm and were veritably flying along the M1 until we ran into road works which, later turned into them closing the M1. So we had 'to make our own entertainment' for two hours as, with everyone else, we crept towards the remaining exit. We talked about every subject under the sun - in particular the Spanish Civil War, we told jokes and, thankfully(?), the two boys had plenty of playground jokes to contribute. But the biggest laugh was watching Rob turn puce as he began to regret the couple of pints of Guinness he'd had just before leaving. Eventually we made it through the jam and, with a pained expression, Rob dutifully ended up watering a St Albans rugby pitch - I don't think either of us will be doing any more diving over the try line in that vicinity. We got home to find wives and daughters already back from London after being mightily p***ed on by the rain - but, certainly for my wife at least, any hardship is worth it for Crowded House.

Played John Breeze's Wandering Winward club tonight. Great to see it back at the Rose and Crown - even better when the smoking ban comes in!

John kindly gave us a 40 minute set and we took the chance to try out our new song called 'The Bite' for the first time. Rob's partner Jane has helped us think about the arrangement for the song and her expert critical ear has given us some great guidance as to how to build the atmosphere in a song. It creates complexity but it adds a huge amount of impact. Instead of me belting it out from start to finish, we now start with a couple of 'verses' played solo by Rob on classical guitar. As a former classical guitar professional, this gives Rob a great chance to shine and it really sets the atmosphere. I then sing the first two verses unaccompanied, and we come together on the chorus. It really seemed to grab the audience's attention and the song was well received.

As always John did a very lively set and there were a number of very good spots done. Again with it being St Albans, we were given great support by our friends. They turned out in numbers on a Sunday night to support us. I might come from Middlesbrough - I might even support Middlesbrough, but it is clear my home is now in St Albans! Thank you to all our friends for tonight's and your continuing support!

At the event, we were recruited by Ross from the Barton Le Clay club to play for him at a fund raising event the following Saturday. Very pleased to help Ross - one of life's "good guys"!

16th April saw us make our way to a singers night at the Herga Folk Club. High quality unaccompanied singing, especially from the well known Johnny Collins. Clearly, competing with background noise from the adjacent Pinner Social Club can be tough for some of the quieter singers. We got chance to do a couple of numbers before club favourite Graham - sorry don't believe we were given a surname - ended the evening with half a dozen unaccompanied songs.

We also got hold of the recent copy of the local folk music review magasine Unicorn , and found in it a very fair review of our CD The Kingshill Valley, by Mike Blair of the Bedford Folk Club. In essence, Mike was kind about our ability to play but wanted us to cut loose a bit more. This is a truth that we had reached independently ourselves a little while back and have been introducing a lot of more upbeat material since starting to play the clubs. Mike also rightly suggests that we should have Rob playing his guitar more - after all he is an extremely accomplished classical guitarist. This too we have been doing, using it on tracks like 'When I took my horse to water' and 'You came to me in sunshine'. We would like to thank Mike for his comments and we have resolved to make our way to Bedford Folk Club so that he can see the results for himself. We hope he approves.

Rob and I are next up as headliners at St Albans Folk Club on the 13th May., so we are rehearsing hard for that. We are also bringing forward the next batch of songs - one self penned by Rob and I about the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, and a few more French songs.

It was nice to have been asked back to Letchworth and Baldock so quickly after our last visit. We were supporting Isambarde - good friends of Show of Hands, and a very impressive (and nice to meet ) threesome indeed. Rob's son Dan (remember the name - Dan will make his name in music in the future, of that I have no doubt) accompanied us and observed proceedings with gereat interest.

We did the warm up 25 minutes and, amongst other things, reprised Black Muddy River off the CD. I think we benefitted quite a bit from all the rehearsal for the appearance at Readifolk because, I can confess my concentration has been somewhat shattered because, earlier that day I had had a rather traumatic hour with my dentist wrestling with an ultimately unsuccessful tooth extraction for an hour earlier in the day. With that and a day's work on top, I was absolutely shattered, but the set went pretty well and, I'm pleased to report that the organisers moved quickly to ask us to return again and have since offered us a full booking in 2008.

For those who don't know it, this is a very nice club with a lovely atmosphere. The pub is very nice, the publican is very supportive indeed which, by virtue of leaving my bag there, I had the pleasure of seeing again after driving all the way back to Baldock the following night to pick it up.

We met a couple of people from the Herga Folk Club, which was great because that is our next port of call. We have heard a lot about Herga, and we are very excited about going there.

Well, it wasn't an April Fools trick: the good people of Readifolk were expecting us on 1st April, and we had a very enjoyable night indeed.

Given that we have some great friends in Reading, my wife and son travelled with us to the 'gig', as did our great friend and part time photographer and sound recordist (as well as a very neat guitarist in his own right!) Andy Garretty. Joe and Mandy laid on an excellent late Sunday afternoon roast dinner, and Rob and I had chance to do an hour's rehearsal before setting off to Readifolk - which certainly got us off the washing up.

We had been working very hard in the weeks before and putting in a lot of rehearsal to get the full set organised. This was pretty much our full repertoire to date that we were putting on show.

As with our previous visit there, the organisers at Reading were extremely welcoming and put us at our ease immediately. Friends and family arrived soon after, and with a good turnout from the Reading regulars, we pretty much had a full house. We had even been identified as the Editor's Choice in that week's Reading Chronicle - quite a shock for Joe and mandy to find Rob and I looming out of their local newspaper as they were checking out the cinema pages in the week before! All down to the excellent marketing of the team at Readifolk.

We had brushed up quite a bit of existing material from the CD and added a few new songs and tunes - including some Spanish material Rob has been working on. And I am pleased to say it all went very well indeed. It turned out that it was a very quiet night for floor singers and, as such, we played a couple of very long sets indeed. We should confess that when the night's MC then said I think we can ask Na-Mara for one more, the tank was empty - we had played our 'encores' in the second set, including Mick Hanly's version of The Verdant Braes of Screen. So, Rob sat out and I did a rendition of Tir Na Nog's Daisy Lady which I hadn't played for some time. Thankfully, Una, one of the organisers knew it and liked it very much - so, it ended up being a very nice way to end the evening.

So we had chance to call back on Joe and Mandy after the show for a cup of tea before setting off back to St Albans. We have had some great feedback from the night, sold a few CDs and, thanks to the new found friends at Reading, our confidence is now as high as it has ever been. Thank you Readifolk - we wish you all the very best. We certainly hope to be back.

Given that 1st April at the Reading Folk Club is our first full booking, we could not have hoped for a better 'dress rehearsal' than this. In the quiet suburbs of Welwyn Garden City, on Sunday afternoons, making use of a Quaker Friends Meeting House, there is a music club. The town of Welwyn seems unusually well provided with classical musicians of the highest order, and most weeks they have a classical recital. However, through connections that Rob has, an invitation had been made to us and to a Parisian Swing band to do the honours. We had originally planned to do around 45 minutes worth of material, but just before the day arrived we heard that the other band had lost a member through illness, and were asked to do an hour's worth. Given our preparations for Reading, we had more than hour's material we could do, and were happy to rise to the challenge.

But, probably what surprised us most was the scale of the audience. There must have been at least 75 people in the 'meeting room', which was a square shaped, high-domed, and (for the benefit of ageing Quakers) acoustically improved. We had a fair few friends come over from St Albans to support us, but by far and away the vast bulk of the attendees were local. They ranged from the very old to the very young, with musical tastes to match.

The organisers were unbelievably friendly and accommodating. Rob's acquaintance was very encouraging; he and a local teacher were actively setting up when we arrived, laying out the stage area. The teacher, who very kindly invited us back, with others, to his place for a drink afterwards, was also kind enough to record the session for us. But special thanks go out to Mary - (I'm sorry Mary, I didn't catch your first name). Mary was there when we first arrived. She was a very sprightly 80 year old who had been brought up in Ireland. Ours was her kind of music and she had been looking forward to seeing us, after hearing our CD. She knew her folk music well and, when younger had known and often went to see the great Ewan MacColl and A L Lloyd. But, more than all of this, she presented Rob and I with two songs that she had personally translated from Gaelic. Her modesty in doing so was very touching and, when we get past the Reading, Letchworth and Herga Folk Club commitments, I am very keen to try the songs out and, if nothing at all comes from it, try and make a recording of the songs for Mary - who looked after us so wonderfully all afternoon and evening.

In some ways, given the emphasis that we put on musicality, this was a very natural audience for us. They seemed very much to enjoy the results of the time that Rob has lavished on getting the arrangements for the songs just so. We had rehearsed hard the week before and we were ready. Conscious of the varied audience we played across the full spectrum of our repetoire. Modern material like You Came To Me in Sunshine, was juxtaposed with traditional songs like 'When I was a Fair Maid'. We did all three of the French songs in our current repertoire (although there are at least half a dozen bubbling under). In the (mistaken belief) that Welwyn shared one thing with Middlesbrough, namely ICI, I also did a rendition of The Chemical Worker's Song, popular in the Boro clubs of my youth - a Ron Angel song I think. Sadly, ICI in Welwyn has now closed. How could I have missed that, especially when my former next door neighbour used to work there!

When we finished, everyone broke for tea and biscuits (well you're not going to get a pint there are you!) and I am pleased to say the feedback was excellent. We sold a few CDs and lots of people wanted to engage with us on different topics - the Benjamin Britten variations on French Folk tunes, the Christy Moore song, Viva La Quinta Brigada. All very animated.

The everyone returned to listen to the Parisian Swing band, who were really excellent. If this was them with a 'man down', they must be astonishing fully fledged. With a double bass, guitar and fiddle, doing Django Rheinhart and Stephane Grappelli material, they were a wow for 30 minutes. At the soiree afterwards, it was clear that they knew the local folk scene well and, I think, promised to put a word in for us at the Bishop Stortford Folk Club.

So, our attention turns to Reading. Rob is overseas with work all week, so it 'Home Alone' rehearsal for me. Not a bad idea though - it might knock a few of these lyrics into my thick bonce.

There are talented clubs and talented clubs - this is a club full of talent. Rob and I made the long journey to do just two numbers but it was worth it. First, we got to see a lot of new performers who we hadn't come across before - too many to mention but the stand out for me was a cover version of a Karine Polwart song by an exceptionally good female singer - and second, the organisers were kind enough to offer us the opportunity to return and do a 25 minute slot to finish the night off on June 29th -which is a chance we will jump at.

Such was the demand to play, that there were regular slots of 10 minutes from 8.00 - 10.30pm, with a raffle for Red Nose Day in between (which Rob went and won!). Then the evening was finished off by the very talented band Tu, finishing the night off. Tu comprise Carolyn Causton (ex Shave the Monkey) and Shani Eliraz - a very talented multi-instrumentalist. It was nice to do a CD swap with Shani.

We did an old favourite of ours, 'The Maid of Culmore', and we followed this with the French sea-shanty 'Three Bonny Ships' which seemed to go down well and goes to support the notion that our French project is really winning friends. We got some really excellent feedback afterwards, which made the unusually incident free journey back to St Albans that much more bearable. 'In flight entertainment' was the excellent French Canadian band Genticorum.

Back to fairly hard rehearsals now for our session in Welwyn Garden City next Sunday and then for our first full booking at Reading Folk Club the Sunday afterwards. We are very excited about both opportunities.

Rob and I sent Alan, who runs the Letchworth and Baldock club a copy of our CD some time ago and, very kindly, they asked us to come and do a 25 minute warm up slot to support the main act -the club's resident band Tam Lin, and what a pleasure it turned out to be. This is a really nice club. The venue, The Orange Tree in Baldock is a nice friendly pub, laid out with trestle tables and candles and a (very) small performance area.

By their own admission, it was a quiet night, but it was easy to see how great it must be when they have got a Vin Garbutt or a Martin Carthy in there and the club is buzzing.

As the second on the bill, we were straight on and did the first 25 minutes or so. It was nice to get a decent length of time to gert into the swing of things and, again, as we build our repetoire, we tried a couple of new numbers. We did a song from Triona ni Dhmonaill's repertoire - 'When I was a fair maid', and a song that Rob has composed. taking an 18th Century poem about the fate of a sailor who fought at Trafalgar and who was rapidly forgotten by the nation he fought for (sounds rather familiar really). The song is very beautiful and is called 'Who is it knocks?' Thankfully the audience was sympathetic to a few rough edges on these new tunes.

Tam Lin, percussion, guitar and two fiddles were the main act and played really well, doing a wide and varied mix of material and the third act, Malcolm Hobbs, did a great little set playing an absolutely beautiful Brooks, guitar shaped Irish bouzouki. I would dearly love to see a longer session by him.

(Anyway, they must have liked us because they have asked us back for two more visits in 2007 and a main spot in '08. Very nice indeed, thank you)

It seems traditional that late night rides home throw a few motorway surprises, and this was no exception. Still, the long ride home gave me chance to reminisce on a few folk songs we used to sing at the Anchor Folk Club in Middlesbrough, back in the 1970s, especially a song about the Titanic sinking, that I haven't heard since and haven't been able to find amongst the many that have been written. I will keep searching.

All eyes now are on the next gigs. We have a slot at Cambridge in mid March, then a session at a more classical meeting in Welwyn the week after, followed by our first main spot at Readifolk in Reading on April 1st. I trust they weren't joking when they booked us for that date!