Forty Years On

Photo by Simon Meeds

With many of last week’s absentees recaptured and brought back in chains, our numbers reached 11 (9 singers), liberally supplemented with our canine Honourary Members. The latter led to Leslie having to perform songs such as To Be A Pharmacist whilst simultaneously trying to calm either the Waggy or the Howlly.

We were happy to welcome new blood in the shape of Sean. Sean is a Morris Mate of Terry, but unfortunately for him, fortunately for us, had been invalided out of this week’s morris practice with Plantar Fasciitis, or Morris Dancer’s Heel as it is always called in Holby City. Although claiming not to have been in a folk club for 40 years, he had no difficulties in entertaining us with traditional material (Child 81 Little Musgrave/Matty Groves) and some self-penned songs including Ribbons and Bells – a tribute to Morris Dancers with unfasciated plantars. Derek is already learning the words of Forty Years On: but hopefully Sean's next visit will be much sooner than that! We even let him win the raffle….

Richard was in the chair, and opened the evening with The Bold Ploughing Boy. Later he previewed his and Leslie’s upcoming visit to Auld Reekie with a song based on the old children’s skipping rhyme “Burke’s the butcher, Hare’s the thief, Knox the man that buys the beef”.

Mike having missed last week’s World Cup Rugby theme, caught up by singing Roy Williamson’s Flower of Scotland. But most of the evening’s speculation centred on the result of the England v Wales match, with Roger (minus hearing aid which went walkies at the end of the first half – hopefully not inside any of the dogs) reading further extracts from Under Milk Wood and singing We’ll Keep a Welcome in the Hillside, with Chris adding The Ash Grove. Of course I can now reveal (at 9 o’clock on Saturday night) that England are heading for an easy and wholly inevitable victory…. [Ed: I'm no expert but I think you spoke to soon, deputy]

Steve, as well as the traditional Bold Reilly, sang some songs by expatriate Essexer, now in Devon, John Smith, including his best known work Great Lakes of Love. Conversation then lurched to John Smith’s brewery and brother Sam’s likewise. Sam Smith’s were of course responsible for the closing of a number of long-standing folk club venues in the North when they forbade singing, to avoid paying for Public Performance licences. Derek recalled part of a song he had once extemporised on this subject; for the record, this was the bit he forgot:

So I’m going to cut it out
You can vomit, fight or shout
But one ballad and you’re out
Out of here.

If when to heaven I go
Angels harp a psalm or two
I’ll boot them down below
Never fear.

But the triumph of the night was Colin’s. He found the perfect song to fit the REAL conversation point of the week, in the form of an old music-hall song called Sarah which mentions the possibility of a Prime Ministerial relationship with a pig. (I have checked with the lawyers and they assure me that if anyone goes to prison for saying that, it is the Usual Scribe, who otherwise should be back next week, not his humble deputy.) [Ed: Ouch!]

[Ed: Lots of thanks go to Derek for deputising on the blog in the last couple of weeks. As he indicated we should back to the usual rubbish next week]

(Number of people present - 11, of which 9 performed)