Good golly Miss Molly, is that the time?

The New Royal Family are playing a gig of sorts on Sunday at that hip happening joint Bloomsbury Bowling Alley. We're on at 6.30pm sharpish.

It's our first without axe goddess Charley Stone who is sadly leaving us in order to concentrate on some proper music. Don't worry, though, Charley fans, she'll be back for our official farewell gig some time in February to coincide with my official Retirement From Showbiz. Gulp.

In the meantime, we've a few contractual obligation type shows to get out of the way, starting with Sunday's shebang. It's a 50s themed affair so wear your best quiff / teddy boy outfit. I certainly plan to.

Our bass things, Rob and Richard, will be fighting it out over who gets to play guitar on which song. To make it a bit more exciting I've thrown in a few old rock'n'roll classics they've never played and/or heard before. We haven't rehearsed for this so it should be fun to witness, for one reason or another.

Our acquaintances The Last Army and Jonny Fartpants are on the bill too. And it's FREE. So, c'mon everybody, let's get together tonight. Well, Sunday afternoon. I've got some money in my jeans and I'm really gonna spend it right. On beer. When you hear the music and you can't sit still, you're probably epileptic. Woooh! C'mon everybody (carries on in this fashion for several hours) . . .

So, yeah, I took my Mum on a train holiday to the Rhineland for her birthday last week. It was my first trip abroad - apart from rock'n'roll touring and all that malarkey - since 2002. We weren't quite sure what to expect. I was pretty resigned to the fact that I was probably going to be the youngest person in the party. What I hadn't anticipated was that my Mum was just about the second youngest. It turned out to be one of the most enjoyable experiences I've ever had. I'm definitely more Saga Man than Club 18-30.

We stayed in a small town south of Bonn called Remagen. Despite my unhealthy obsession with World War II (thanks to my apprenticeship on Commando in the early 80s), I'd never heard of it. But for a couple of weeks in March 1945 it was probably the most important place in the world.

This was due to the fact that the bridge there was the last one standing over the Rhine. All the others had been destroyed by the Nazis in an attempt to halt the rapidly advancing Allies. The Remagen bridge was supposed to have been blown up too but attempts to destroy it failed before the Americans got there (probably due to sabotage by Polish slave-labourers).

A mighty old rumpus ensued. Hitler ordered the officers responsible for destroying the bridge to be shot immediately then bombarded the area continuously, eventually firing a ruddy great V2 rocket at it - the only V2 ever fired at a German target. The rocket missed. But ten days after the Americans had captured the bridge, it collapsed, killing a dozen or so US soldiers.

Our tour guide mentioned that the fighting in the area had been so severe that his grandmother had bullet holes in her bedroom wardrobe. My Mum was a bit unsympathetic about this in a Basil Fawlty "well they started it" kind of way. But when we went to the museum that has been set up in what's left of the bridge, she seemed quite moved with the photos of local women, cowering in the woods with their children wrapped in blankets, looking up at the sky in trepidation.



The area is ridiculously picturesque; it's Brothers Grimm territory. There are so many forests it looks like the hills are covered in broccoli. There are fairy tale castles every mile or so. It's not hard to imagine Snow White, Rapunzel and the rest running through the trees.

Remagen is pretty small, maybe 12,000 people or so. But it has a beautiful cathedral on a hill. It's actually a miniature replica of the famous cathedral in Cologne. One night we walked up the hill to take a closer look. There was an evening service on. The candle-lit choir sounded like angels singing.