Up north comes down south

Durham Miners' Gala (Photo: Darrell J Rohl)

A great session this week, thanks in part to the presence of our occasional visitor, Rose, who no doubt influenced the presence of both Kath and Tom. Malcolm and Janet were also welcome visitors from Yorkshire on one of their periodic visits to the area.

Colin as MC started the evening with Needle Cases (Roud 1300).

Mike went back to our suggested theme throughout June of songs sung in the earlier days of the club, singing from the repertoire of Johnny Collins, Free And Easy (Roud 1084).

More Of Your Nonsense

Old man of Port Grigor
(image: Edward Lear, adapted by Goetz Kluge)

With Derek back in the fold last week I have an apology to make. The week before, he wasn't apparently watching Glamorgan beat Gloucestershire at cricket, though he would have rather been doing so than what he was doing - hearing a mechanic make the traditional mechanic's sound of air inhaled through teeth while considering the repairs necessary to Derek's car which was in serious ill health.

Anyway, straight on to the music, Colin as MC kicked off with what he described as a bit of nonsense... The Tailor And The Mouse (Roud 16577).

Mainly mining

Durham Miners' Gala (Photo: Darrell J Rohl)

Last week's session looked like being similar to the previous one with four people present at the start but over the course of the first few songs our numbers were swelled to a respectable eight. There was no official theme and Colin, in his role as MC, started us off with John of Dreams (Bill Caddick, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky). Colin noted that this was a song often sung by our friend Terry C at our sessions.

Two further songs from Terry C's repertoire were sung, mike, pointing out that he had been singing it longer than Terry, gave us Eric Bogle's No Use For Him and Simon sang Hughie Jones' The Ellan Vannin Tragedy.

Trains and mines

The Trimdon Grange rescue(photo by she_who_must - Flickr)

Last week's session had no official theme but that didn't last long. As has become usual, Colin was MC and he asked Derek to start us off.

Derek alluded to 16 February 1882, the date of the Trimdon Grange colliery disaster before singing the song about it, written by Tommy Armstrong: Trimdon Grange Explosion (Roud 3189). This led us straight into a theme of mining which Mike followed with Morley Main (Keith Marsden) about the 1872 disaster there.

Colin claimed a tenuous connection with The Fireman's Growl (FW Skerrett); at least a railway fireman worked with coal. This allowed Simon to follow on with The L&N Don't Stop Here Anymore (Jean Ritchie) which deals with both railways and mines.