Tunes help you breathe...

David Holgate's statue of Julian,
outside Norwich Cathedral,
completed in 2000
(Photo: Tony Grist)

At last week's Dragon Folk Club session it was great to be joined by first timer Nick, and a pleasant surprise to have a visitor to this predominantly singers' club who mostly played tunes. In fact Nick's weapon of choice is the mandola.

Our regular MC, Colin, started things off with Tom Lewis' Marching inland, which in a slightly obtuse way started a maritime or at least watery theme for many of the songs sung in the evening.

As usual I will mark songs new to the Dragon database (though not always new to the club) with an asterisk (*).

Next came Simon with Dougie McLean's Caledonia followed by Nick's Dragon debut with Egan's polka (*).

Paul had clearly been adding to his repertoire and sang The old miner (* roud 1136) while Denny gave us John Conolly's Fiddlers Green. And so endeth the first rotation.

As is traditional, I will mention everything Nick performed. All but the last were tunes played on the mandola. For the last one he borrowed Simon's guitar and sang; something we understand he is not accustomed to doing in public.

• Ten penny bit (*)
• Mairi's wedding
• Drowsy Maggie (*)
• John Ryan's polka (*)
• Moonstruck (* Kev Carmody)

Other songs new to the Dragon database were:

• Denny - Julian of Norwich (Sydney Carter) Julian lived in permanent seclusion as an anchoress in her cell, which was attached to St Julian's Church, Norwich. She died sometime after 1416.
• Colin - Essequibo River
• Colin - I fought the law (Sonny Curtis)

It fell to Simon to close the evening with When all men sing (Keith Scowcroft, Derek Gifford).

Now listen to a selection of songs sung during this session.

(Number of people present - 5 of whom 5 performed)

Do you feel like a challenge?

The landing place at Rockstone from which the start
to the gold fields at the Essequibo River is made

We were a small but pretty enthusiastic band last week. Early conversations ranged through subjects relating to funerals and crematoria. This isn't perhaps as unusual as you would think, given that Mike works at the crematorium close to our venue and Richard also frequently finds himself at such premises in a professional capacity.

Our resident canine, Indy, was in fine voice and his timing does seem to be improving. During the singing of at least three songs I noticed him coming in perfectly on cue: variously as a wailing ghost, a howling dog and a baying wolf when the lyric required it.

Harvest 2014

Pete Shutler of The Yetties

This week was our harvest session with sandwiches provided by Maggie and most present having brought produce for the raffle whose proceeds will go to St Peter's Hospice.

Speaking of the hospice, I will get an early plug in for next week's session (3 October) which will be in memory of Pat (Eades) Hyett who died there recently. Pat, together with her husband Keith, was familiar on the local folk scene and a regular visitor to the Dragon Folk Club. Please come along and bring your friends and family so that we can celebrate the life of our friend Pat in the best way possible. Any money collected will once again be donated to St Peter's Hospice.

Richard in charge

John Jacob Niles

Mike and Maggie were absent from this week's session as planned, so Richard was in charge. Officially there was no theme but "A song what (sic) Mike sings" seemed like a good idea, and about half of us took part.

Richard kicked off with The Holmfirth Anthem. Derek and Simon both followed on with more songs from Mike's repertoire.