Moon, martyrs, Australia and hangings

Buzz Aldrin walks on the moon, July 20, 1969 (Photo: NASA)

What a contrast was last week's session to the previous one; we were down from 10 to three people but nevertheless we meandered in some interesting directions and despite a pragmatically early finish, before Derek dropped off from lack of sleep, we got through quite a lot of songs.

Colin, the MC, started us off on the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission with Jonathan King's Everyone's Gone To The Moon. The others may have been caught off guard by the perfectly reasonable theme but improvised anyway, Simon singing It's Only A Paper Moon (Harold Arlen, Yip Harburg, Billy Rose) and Derek with Hey Diddle Diddle (Roud 19478) completed the very short first lap of a tight circuit.

Colin kept on storming with a lunar theme, singing Man In The Moon (Roud 21397). Up to the challenge, Simon offered Neil Young's After The Goldrush - "silver spaceships", etc. Maybe I misunderstood what seemed to be indications from Derek that his singing of The Kildare Rake (Roud 5681) was keeping to the theme but there seems to me no obvious link unless the girl in the fourth verse is a werewolf.