"Get yourself another set of plates, you ***** idiot!"

I fear one reader didn't fully understand my last post. I received a comment, which I didn't publish, suggesting that our problem with taking stuff back to the house might be somewhat relieved if we got ourselves crockery, cutlery, pots and pans for both the house and the boat. Skanky pair that we are! Except not quite in those words. The strange thing is that I didn't say anything in the last post about cutlery or crockery. So I did point out to the gentleman that we do, indeed, have full sets of tableware in both places. And glasses.

Pots and pans and kitchen utensils are a different matter, because, having bought new ones for the boat, we didn't feel we wanted to go to the not inconsiderable expense of buying duplicates for the house. But the old ones there are really not up to the job any more as far as we're concerned. So we take the lot back and forth twixt boat and house. It's a heavy boxful.

We took Jess to Oxford on Friday. The village of Goring, to be precise. The journey was a bit of a pig. Traffic wasn't too bad, surprisingly, but the weather was awful, with a lot of rain and high wind. This had stopped by the time we started back, so the return was very much more pleasant. Said the Maiden were great, as always, and the other, very varied acts were most entertaining. We only stayed until the interval, because Jess wanted to go on to a party. She'd left her job at the Alban Arena that day, to concentrate more on her various musical projects, and the party was partly to mark that.

A few days previously, the Maidens had launched their first music video, a track from their new EP, "Of Maids and Mariners", to be released later this month. The CD features a cracking folksy version of Dolly Parton's "Jolene".

If you love music, check them out!