My friendship and subsequent musical partnership with Ralph Jordan,whose funeral was on Monday, was probably partly due to Mudcat, as we met at a barn dance in Surrey.It was the last gig of the Bismarcks, and he had a part to play at the end of it,and had time to kill. We ended up chatting,and I commented on his forthcoming retirement on his job with the BBC,which surprised him. I had to explain that he had posted about it here, and tell him my Mudcat name and he jokingly offered to come and accompany me on some songs. That was the start of the friendship, and eventually the joke became reality,and we worked together for too short a while. In the year before he died we were talking about making a CD of the work we had done together,but sadly that's obviously not going to happen now.It was a good friendship, and some good music came out of it.