I joined Ely’s beautiful people yesterday for the opening of Ely’s first boutique hotel called Poets House – complete with copper baths in the bedroom – and sipped my champagne with a local bishop, our MP, my dashing potato farmer friend, a few councillors and local dignitaries, some media folk – and even a couple of poets!

In fact, these were two very distinguished poets who moved to Ely two years ago – Wendy Cope, who has been tipped as a suitable Poet Laureate, and her partner Lachlan Mackinnon.

This is the poem Wendy wrote and recited to mark the opening of this wonderful new venue in our beautiful cathedral city:

Since we settled in this little city,
So pleasant and friendly and pretty,
We have all that we need,
Except, we’ve agreed
For one thing – and that was a pity.

But now we’re no longer deprived
And we have rejoiced and high-rived,
An upmarket hotel,
Good location as well,
Poets House, We are glad you’ve arrived.

The hotel is beautiful and it’s a brave step opening up a luxurious hotel during an economic decline, but there is certainly nothing else like it in our city, and it would make a super wedding venue.

Living locally, I doubt I will get to try out the copper bath at the foot of some of the beds, but I shall certainly return to Poets House to chill out in their airy bar for drinks, and, hopefully, dinner too.

I might even bump into Wendy and Lachlan there and could ask them to compose a follow-up poem on their life in Ely.

I hope they have tomorrow’s Ely’s Eel Day in their diary, now that is worth a stanza or two…