Valentine's Day 2020

(Photo: Simon Meeds)

At our Valentine's Day session it was great to see Mel return for his second visit and even better that he indicated it is likely to become a regular occurrence. There were many songs of love and/or lust and a few which were simply calendar-relevant.

Colin, our MC, started things off with Jan Knuckey.

Let's get out of the way the songs which referred to the calendar rather than to love and lust. The ones I spotted were Mike's Last Valentine's Day (Roud 6475) and Derek's Bold Princess Royal (Roud 528, Laws K29).

Simon's slightly sideways glance at Valentine started with reminiscences of a love lost with Harvey Andrews' Margarita. Mike's more conventional approach, if with some playing hard-to-get was Come Write Me Down (Roud 381).

Make way for Fred

Fred Jordan

That's more like it... we were definitely quorate last week with the return of Geoff from a chessing sojourn, and a visit from Tom. Unfortunately, Rose, the reason for Tom's visit, wasn't with us, concerned as she was about the promised extreme weather. It wasn't really that bad on Friday night in the end. Anyway, we hope to see her sometime in the not-too-distant future.

Colin, taking his usual seat as MC, started us off with The Son Of A Gambolier (Charles Ives). As predicted, Mike walked in with Indy the dog while he was singing.

Tom gave us Across The Great Divide from one of his favourite singer-songwriters, Kate Wolf. Kate died in 1986 at the age of 44, Tom says, towards the end of what had seemed a successful course of treatment for leukaemia.

To join my voice with yours and sing a song with all our might

Harry Bridges

We were a little thin on the ground this week but keen enough that when Mike suggested calling it a day at half time, it was decided to carry on. As the song, Friends like these, by George Papavgeris, sung by Robin, says "I've been waiting since last [Friday] just to be with you tonight, just to join my voice with yours and sing a song with all our might".

I didn't discern any themes, intended or otherwise this week and there were no visitors to mention, so I'll just list at random a few of the songs that were sung - maybe some of the less well known (at least to me) ones.