Worcester

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Worcester is a really interesting old city in England with an amazing cathedral and a rich history. Elgar, one of my favourite English classical composers, lived there. We played in Huntingdon Hall, a converted church dating from the 1700’s. Having once lived in a listed cottage dating from the 1500’s, I found lots of examples of half - timbered buildings in the back streets and this one, pictured, shows that the builders were not always so great back then. Either they’d been hitting the ale a little too hard or not paid much attention to good foundations! Mind you, there are still a lot of these buildings still standing. The example that we once owned, was actually constructed of oak timbers taken from dismantled British naval ships. This obviously accounts for the irregularities and lack of too many right angles.

People often ask me; don’t I yearn for the glory days, when we played in major cities to thousands of people? Well, those were great days but we never got to see anything much on our travels. These kind of cities and towns, where there is so much history and local interest plus great restaurants, were lost on us. I’ve recently seen so much more of my own country that I missed out on back in the day, despite now living overseas. It’s a blessing.

One thing however, that was not a blessing was the strange kerfuffle I had over hotel rooms in Worcester. If you remember, this area had serious floods earlier in the year. It was Bob Skeat who alerted me to the increase in humidity in the halls we’ve been playing in, especially as the temperature rises on a gig. It’s November and it’s by no means cold. I had the misfortune to stay in a hotel room with a serious mold spore problem. It was so bad that my eyes were watering and I was choking in the middle of the night. I ended up walking the streets at 3.30a.m. looking for another place to stay. I came up with the Fownes Hotel but they could only take me until 11.00 a.m. I got a few hours shut – eye, got up and went over to the Whitehouse Hotel where I finally spent a mold - free 2nd night, after an excellent gig and meeting some very friendly fans. It was last year, in this venue, where a certain Ted Turner joined us on stage for a couple of songs, if you remember.

A.P.