Heading for west London, to The Rose and Crown in Ealing, to celebrate National Poetry Day.  One of the many and varied events taking place across the UK in celebration of the richness, power and diversity of poetry, old and new.  To the best of our knowledge 'Journey to the Fifth Province' constitutes London's only event to focus on the wealth of poetry from Ireland - though someone may yet tell us otherwise!

One thing we know for certain is that Steph played on her first 'Journey to the Fifth Province' and did a fantastic job.  She has a particular love for playing alongside the spoken word, and members of the audience (a full house, in the pub's inviting 'library' area) were astonished to learn afterwards that it had been her debut with us. 

The Rose and Crown is known for being friendly, accommodating and well-appointed; for its great menu and for Manager Tom Tucker's vision to establish a programme of interesting events in the pub, including small scale theatre.  The pub sits close to Ealing Studios and first steps towards our performance there were made a good many months ago when Donal took refuge in the pub following a film casting.  He sat next to the open fire with a drink making amendments to the script that was steadily becoming 'Journey to the Fifth Province'.  Having established that it was indeed a script, Tom asked 'Why don't you perform it here?'  And that was that.