St Andrew's Day 2017

Point of Sleat, Isle of Skye, Scotland
(Photo: Simon Meeds)

Last Friday's session saw a satisfactory number of seven bums on seats for a St Andrew's Day theme. I had pointed out in publicity that St Andrew is patron saint of many places and things other than Scotland, including singers, but it was barely needed since I think there were only two songs clearly unrelated to Scotland, one very deliberately and the other was written by someone with what appears to be a Scottish name.

Colin was the MC and he called on Steve C to start us off; Steve sang Jock Stewart (Roud 975).

Mandela, floods and Scottish remnants

Hamish Henderson

The big world event this week was the death of Nelson Mandela. At the beginning of the evening only Derek had a relevant song; one he had written himself, called Mandela. This was a song which he considered to be poorly written and he had therefore sung it only three times before. This, he declared, would be its last outing. We didn't think it anywhere near so bad. Later on Terry turned up and sung another song related to South Africa. Unfortunately I've been unable to identify it.

Simon spoke of the tidal surge that has affected Lincolnshire. The flooding got to within a mile of his parents' house and flooded the homes of several people he knows. It was noted that Three score and ten would be appropriate but it had been sung the previous week. Simon had considered reading High tide on the coast of Lincolnshire by Jean Ingelow until he realised how long it is!