Some more nonsense

(Photo: Simon Meeds)

Last Friday's session was a time for announcements of forthcoming themes, so here are some dates for your diary:

• 14 Feb - St Valentine - principally love and lust but taking note of his patronages: Affianced couples, against fainting, beekeepers, happy marriages, love, plague, epilepsy, Lesbos
• 28 Feb - St David - Wales; Pembrokeshire; Naas; vegetarians; poets
• 20 Mar - St Patrick - Ireland, Nigeria, Montserrat, Archdiocese of New York, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, Boston, Rolla, Missouri, Loíza, Puerto Rico, Murcia (Spain), Clann Giolla Phádraig, engineers, paralegals, Archdiocese of Melbourne; against snakes and sins
• 24 April - St George - England, Ethiopia, Georgia, Catalonia, etc.; agricultural workers, farmers, field workers; soldiers; archers; armourers; equestrians, cavalry, saddle makers; chivalry; skin diseases, lepers and leprosy, syphilis; sheep, shepherds;

Striding through May

St Constantine's Church, Constantine, Cornwall
(Photo: Vernon White)

While we didn't quite hit the heady heights of the previous week's attendance, eight didn't seem too bad last week. There was no official theme though some people were carrying through the May theme from previous weeks.

Colin was MC and generously put himself on first. He broke the ice with Steve Knightley's Man In Green to mark the previous weekend's Jack in the Green procession in Bristol.

Derek fulfilled the promise I made in the previous blog report, that he would sing a version of the song Hal an Tow (Roud 1520), used on Helston, Cornwall's May Flora Day, but this time the one used in neighbouring Constantine (sorry I couldn't find a recording of Constantine).

Danger, men at work

Photo by James Butler

There was no official theme this week, so song subjects were a little all over the place. We initially gathered as nine but when Colin, who MCed, asked Steve G to sing, Steve said he had to leave immediately. It's OK, we hadn't upset him, but it did mean we were down to eight and Steve didn't get to sing this time.

Derek kicked off the evening with The Ballad Of William Bloat by Raymond Calvert and Mike responded with The Deserter/Ratcliff Highway (Roud 493).

Marking the unveiling of the Welsh National Coal Mining Memorial

Jean Ritchie

Mike and Maggie were back from their holiday and after Richard's stint in charge he had forgotten to bring most of the club kit back, so we did without beer mats and Maggie improvised a poster and raffle tickets. The Dunkirk spirit evoked, we managed to make a good evening of it.

After receiving a donation from Betty, Maggie announced that the donations from harvest for BUST had reached an excellent £45.

On the 14 October 2013 a Welsh National Coal Mining Memorial was unveiled on the site of the Universal Colliery in Senghenydd, South Wales. This date marked the 100th anniversary of the United Kingdom's worst ever coal mining disaster, where 440 men and boys lost their lives. The memorial pays tribute to the legacy of coal mining and remembers the 8,000 people who have died in Welsh mines and the countless others who have died as a result of coal-mining related illnesses.This led some people to take a mining theme for the evening.

Vaguely Glastonbury

The elusive Mick Jagger

Mike sang The Sailboat Malarky which was one of the first songs that the Bristol Shantymen sang. At the time Mike worked for a dairy and one of the group members took to singing a version -  The Milkfloat Starkey.

Lesley gave a big build up to one of her favourite songs of 1970 - The Wonder of You. Mike says it was a UK hit for Elvis Presley in 1972 but Lesley was playing it on a jukebox in Jersey, so we'll give the benefit of the doubt that it was popular earlier in the Channel Isles, as apparently it was worldwide outside the UK. Following on from this, Mike later sang In the Ghetto, a request from Maggie.