Spinning a yarn

(Photo by Hans Splinter)

Last week's session saw the return of Richard and Lesley after their travels and a rare, in recent times, appearance of Gary, who I believe has been busy travelling and performing at festivals over the last few months.

Colin also returned from his break and fell back into his usual role of MC. Derek was the first to sing with Lord Bateman (Roud 40, Child 53). It proved unusually problematic for him since he started off with his usual tune but it morphed half-way into another, equally valid tune for the song.

Mike had no such tune problem with his cotton picking song, We're All Surrounded but his problem was with the words. Having realised the words he sings provide almost the same story-line as many other of his songs, he had tried to learn a new set but they slipped his mind, so he had to carry on as usual instead.

Richard's first song was Horn Fair (Roud 2482) and Lesley's was I Wrote Me A Letter To Syracuse (Dave Cartwright, Bill Caddick).

Simon took us to the North East with Sally Wheatley (Joe Wilson) and Colin gave us all sticks of rock and Kiss-Me-Quick hats with the harder-to-find Send Us A Postcard (John Conolly). This caused Gary to comment that on a recent trip to the seaside, despite a lot of looking, he couldn't find a Kiss-Me-Quick hat... which in turn led to a raft of jokes which I won't bother to repeat here.

Gary himself sang us the rather wonderful Welcome, written by Jon Fromer.

Roger gave us Rose Of Tralee. The words of the song are credited to Edward Mordaunt Spencer and the music to Charles William Glover, but a story circulated in connection with the Rose of Tralee Festival claims that the song was written by William Pembroke Mulchinock, a wealthy Protestant, out of love for Mary O'Connor, a poor Catholic maid in service to his parents.

Chris finished off the first tour of the room with The Spinning Wheel (John Francis Waller).

Lesley dared to sing Pleasant And Delightful (Roud 660, Laws O30). That's not to say there's anything wrong with the song but singing it risks being drowned out by alternative words and actions from Mike - and a few from Derek and Richard as well!

Colin took us back to the early days of the Society of Friends (Quakers) with George Fox (Sydney Carter) and his "shaggy, shaggy locks".

Finally the evening was closed with Roger singing Gentle On My Mind (John Hartford).

There's no theme again at this week's session (15 July), so I hope you can come and contribute something or at least listen and join in with some choruses.

Here's a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 9, of whom 9 performed)