Sumer is icumen in

Catacombs of Paris
(Photo: Simon Meeds)

Things are getting warmer at The Bridge at last and some of us are "casting clouts". Five slightly less heavily clothed singers turned up to make some noise on a Friday evening.

Colin was MC as usual ans started the session off with Bobby Sands' Back home in Derry.

Paul took us on our first antipodean journey of the evening with The Green Man from the pen of John Thompson who is a member of the Australian band Cloudstreet.

Denny brought us a serving of Good English ale (roud 1512), after which Simon tried to put us to sleep with John o' dreams (Bill Caddick, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky).

Geoff completed the first round with Dinny the piper (roud 8147).

I'll randomly mention a few more of the songs we sang.

Paul sang Generations of change by Matt Armour, which was new to the Dragon database. It was alsoPaul who sang another song new to the database, though not necessarily new to the Dragon, which was Close the coalhourse door by Alex Glasgow, clearly about the hard life of a miner, but with an extra verse dealing with the Aberfan Disaster.

Denny was suffering from the after-effects of a dental appointment which didn't stop her singing, but we later learned that while Paul was waiting for her session in the chair to finish he had rewritten Close the coalhouse door "Close the dentist's door, there's blood inside... there's bones inside... there's screams inside... there's gold inside." We heard the world premier.

There was some discussion after Geoff had sung the challenging Rocky road to Dublin (roud 1676 - DK Gavan) in slip-jig time (9/8).

Colin sang his own song, John Chiddy about a local (Hanham) man who was killed while averting a rail disaster in 1876, and for whose widow and children a house was built with donations.

Simon closed the evening singing Stan Rogers' Northwest Passage.

Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 5 of whom 5 performed)