What a difference a week makes

Grand Union Canal, Park Royal (Photo: Derek Arridge)

What a difference a week makes! From a very (ahem) intimate session the previous week we had a perfectly adequate crew this week, not least thanks to three occasional visitors. John O and Chris O are not local but visit us when they are in the area with their caravan. John says this was their fourth visit, which seems about right. We were also joined by Lisa who has been before and was a very welcome sight and sound at the session.

This week's session will have an Easter theme, being on Good Friday (yes, we don't let something like that stop us), and next week will be our St George's session (26 April, just three days late).

A bunch of Colins

The absent Colin (Photo by Simon Meeds)

Despite special levels of advertising, nay pleading, we really were only three at last week's session. There was officially no theme but I had suggested that in his absence we might sing songs from Colin's vast (although like mine, paper-based) repertoire and indeed everyone came up with something along those lines.

There is no set theme for this Friday's (12 April) session, so please help us make it a bit more populous... at least Colin should be back from his wee trip to Scotland.

Simon took up the MC baton and started off with the first song previously sung by Colin, Bless 'Em All (Fred Godfrey, Robert Kewley - Roud 8402). Geoff reminded us of Colin singing The Gasman Cometh (Michael Flanders, Donald Swann).

Benjamin Britten's gardener

Bob Hart

It looked as though we were going to be particularly thin on the ground this week, causing Mike to joke that it may "come round" once or even twice... every ten minutes. His scepticism was however put to bed when three further people came though the door - not a huge crowd but certainly enough to make a good do of it.

The three welcome latecomers were Carl, now almost a regular, who brought his brother-in-law, Derek (we'll call him Derek 2 to differentiate from our regular traditional singer of Suffolk origin with the same name), and Alison, whose arrival was somewhat sudden and startling but whose presence and singing were definitely more soothing.

Mike started us off with a newly "discovered" Bristol version of Outward bound a sea song, which he had explained on a previous occasion is not a shanty because shanties are either outward or homeward bounders, whereas this song mentioned both directions.