Dog Day Evening

Ron Angel

The Dragon this week echoed to the patter of tiny feet. No, no-one gave birth; but there was a massed canine visit by Indy (new pet of Maggie and Mike), Maggie L's new whippet Freddie and grizzled folk-club veteran Gertie, to meet each other and take part in a variety of games such as Lick the Vicar and Drink Colin's Beer.

Indy, having tried hard to join in several songs, needed to take his owners home before the stroke of midnight caused any of them to change back into their secret identities; so Richard acted as MC for the second half, as well as singing Adar Mân Y Mynydd which I think roughly translates as The Small Birds That Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain [The little birds of the mountain]. And on the subject of foreign languages, Lesley performed the Miners' Lifeguard in perfect American!

Derek inevitably began by cheering people down, if that is the correct antonym, by announcing the death of pillar of Teesside folk music Ron Angel. Since your regular scribe (hands up, who guessed this is not he?) had sung Ron's Chemical Worker's Song in the past few weeks, Derek declined to do it again and confined himself to one of the shanties for the singing of which Ron will be remembered by all who had the privilege of knowing him. In this case he chose Cruising Round Yarmouth to the tune of Blow the Man Down. Firstly this caused Jan to suspect that there might be a secondary non-nautical meaning to the song, though I can't see it myself. And secondly it encouraged Richard to sing Erin Go Bragh NOT to the tune of Blow the Man Down.

We were delighted to welcome back Keith for the first time since the sad loss of his wife Pat. As always he awed the guitarists present with his precision and finger control in such pieces as The Causeway. And we also welcomed back our recent visitors Chris (Seventeen Come Sunday – strictly speaking that was her song, not her biography) and Roger who sang songs including Rhinestone Cowboy.

Paul who has heretofore confined himself to playing instrumentals, broke his duck with a song he had written called That's All I Know.

Phil amused the assembled with Plastic Jesus for which Richard and Lesley failed to trace a precise supporting biblical quotation; perhaps they were playing canny after Colin's performance of Sydney Carter's 'The vicar is a beatnik and he ought to be defrocked'. That song immediately struck home to me as one I used to hear a lot, but hadn't heard now for a very long time. Hardly had I thought that than Jan sang Jeff Buckley's Satisfied Mind (Joe "Red" Hayes and Jack Rhodes), which comes into exactly the same category.

May I end with the reminder that next week is Harvest; so please feel free to arrive bearing, for charitable purposes, anything in aid of which the fields have been ploughed and/or scattered, or money to enter the inevitable raffle for the aforementioned produce. And the following week we hope as many friends as possible will attend to commemorate the life of Pat.

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

(Number of people present - 14, of which 11 performed)

What shall we do with a drunken folk club?

Sperm Whale

A slight increase in numbers over last week was united in creating a better evening by the silence from last week's rogue speaker. In fact the only unexpected accompaniment was occasioned by Ray's phone, and since Gary was forced to admit that its warble tone was in the right key, this did not constitute a serious problem.

Those non-attenders who had their windows open and heard peals of laughter from the area of Shortwood may like to know the story of its origin. After a mention of whores, Colin was asked to raise the tone, and seemed genuinely convinced that he was about to do so. Hint to readers – when attempting tone-raising, try to avoid a song like New Zealand Whales / Coast of Peru which opens with the words “Come all of you whalermen who are cruising for sperm” (let alone the mention of se[a]men in the next line). In the absence of any other theme for the evening Robin proceeded to give us Dave Oakley's Clonakilty Whaling Song, in which they 'prefer minke to sperm', and Derek could not resist Cruising Round Yarmouth.