Diana Stones BlogIn loving memory of Vicky Martin 1947

I had known Vicky Martin since 2004.

Our last performance with Vicky was captured on video

Since then we played around 3500 gigs of various kinds. We met through Roses forum when Vicky posted a thread about coming out having formed a band in 2003 and deciding to start performing as Vicky at that time. She was at that time looking for a keyboard player. I had been playing music and recording for many years but till then had not done many live performances.

When I joined I expected that it might be the case of the odd gig at the weekend twice a month. Vicky had other ideas and by the start of 2005 we were already doing around 10 gigs a month on average. A lot of these were in pubs, some of which were a bit rough at best. In those days I often travelled to gigs alone and having not having adjusted to musician time, I would turn up early and be “the only Tranny in the pub”. That was a rapid learning curve. The smoking ban had not come in yet either so a lot of these places were the brown nicotine stained variety.

The years went by in somewhat of a blur. I left my full time job at the Civil Service in 2008 and most of my time was spent with music of various sorts. THere were really about 5 different bands that we had in all the various combinations.

Elephant Shelf, Jessie Pies Cleavage of Death (Jessie was at the time a very talented Burlesque Performer, and is also a songwriter and a very good artist and painter), The Delta ladies, A swing/jazz group, and and another act that filled the gaps between.

Over the years we were also privileged to met and work with some very wonderful musicians and also managed to interview quite a few others too.

Whilst we were doing that Vicky also wrote for music magazines, acted as an agent for other acts, which she was still doing and still being an ordained minister of the church often gave the service at funerals when money was a bit tight.

Vicky had fallen away from the church, but was a person faith though in later years in the agnostic sense.

“the truth values of certain claims — especially metaphysical and religious claims such as whether or not God, the divine or the supernatural exist — are unknown and perhaps unknowable”

Her belief was a bit like the famous Patrick Moore quote about the possibilities of extraterrestrial life ” We just don’t know”

Recently we were intended to set up a folk club at a URC in Enfield. The church of England often has a close relationship with real ale drinkers and so it was that Vicky became friends with the local Rev and his Mrs after meeting at the Little Green Dragon, a micro pub near to Vickys apartment.

We had an event planned “Concert against Racism” on Friday 3 May organised with the Local Labour Party which Vicky was also member of for about the last 4 years. After some debate we have decided to go ahead with it as a combined fund raiser for various charities and a celebration of Vicky’s life with live music and some Ales. We hope that many of Vicky’s friends and co-conspirators will be there.

Vicky’s health was reasonable up until the last, though Vicky had a quadruple bypass op in 2014 and also had congestive heart failure and atrial fibrillation so we knew she would not be around forever. In the last few months it was apparent that she was tired and finding things much more of an effort and we were reducing our gigs to around 80 a year.

Vicky’s death was sudden though and she leaves a very big gap. She also helped many people over the years without making any fuss.

I was with her in her last moments and she had shown no signs of distress at any point. Our last words were about the next gig we were to play that weekend.

We have an event which will be my first performance without Aunty Vicky: