Some more nonsense

(Photo: Simon Meeds)

Last Friday's session was a time for announcements of forthcoming themes, so here are some dates for your diary:

• 14 Feb - St Valentine - principally love and lust but taking note of his patronages: Affianced couples, against fainting, beekeepers, happy marriages, love, plague, epilepsy, Lesbos
• 28 Feb - St David - Wales; Pembrokeshire; Naas; vegetarians; poets
• 20 Mar - St Patrick - Ireland, Nigeria, Montserrat, Archdiocese of New York, Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, Boston, Rolla, Missouri, Loíza, Puerto Rico, Murcia (Spain), Clann Giolla Phádraig, engineers, paralegals, Archdiocese of Melbourne; against snakes and sins
• 24 April - St George - England, Ethiopia, Georgia, Catalonia, etc.; agricultural workers, farmers, field workers; soldiers; archers; armourers; equestrians, cavalry, saddle makers; chivalry; skin diseases, lepers and leprosy, syphilis; sheep, shepherds;

Contemptible or unaccomplished?

We look forward to seeing hoards of you this Friday for our slightly early Christmas themed session. Come ready to perform songs, tunes, poems, monologues, stories or jokes on the subject of Christmas, Yule or Bah-Humbug, or anything really that takes your fancy. There should be mince pies for the interval.

Last week's session had no theme and the contributions were quite varied as you will see from the usual "selection" link at the bottom of this post. MC, Colin started us off on a theme of leather on willow with The Cricketers Of Hambledon (Bruce Blunt, Peter Warlock).

Geoff followed on with Nowhere Man (Lennon-McCartney) making life very easy for this scribe to find a video. Slightly more difficult to find is Derek's Three Wee Glasgow Molls (Roud 6960). Colin was the only one this time to sing a song I couldn't trace at all which should probably be an embarrassment since Mike clearly knew it and I think Derek may have known it too.

The anniversary waltz

Kevin Barry

Before getting down to the report of last week's session there is an important notice, that there will be no Dragon Folk Club session on 13 October because The Bridge Inn is hosting a wake for someone from the village. There is no need though to go without music that week because there are two recommended events.

On Wednesday 11 October Simon's friend Damian Clarke is doing a gig in aid of Médecins Sans Frontières. Damian, who plays hammered dulcimer and hurdy gurdy, will be joined by George Whitfield on accordion and Kent Nielsen on ukulele. All this will be at The Star Inn, Fishponds and will kick off at 7:30pm.

The second recommended gig is friend of the Dragon Folk Club, Keith Hyett who is performing his own classical guitar compositions as part of his Memories of You tour at Mount Pleasant Community Centre, Bradford on Avon at 7:30pm on Friday 13 October. Tickets at £7.00 are available on the door or from www.ents24.com.

Marking the unveiling of the Welsh National Coal Mining Memorial

Jean Ritchie

Mike and Maggie were back from their holiday and after Richard's stint in charge he had forgotten to bring most of the club kit back, so we did without beer mats and Maggie improvised a poster and raffle tickets. The Dunkirk spirit evoked, we managed to make a good evening of it.

After receiving a donation from Betty, Maggie announced that the donations from harvest for BUST had reached an excellent £45.

On the 14 October 2013 a Welsh National Coal Mining Memorial was unveiled on the site of the Universal Colliery in Senghenydd, South Wales. This date marked the 100th anniversary of the United Kingdom's worst ever coal mining disaster, where 440 men and boys lost their lives. The memorial pays tribute to the legacy of coal mining and remembers the 8,000 people who have died in Welsh mines and the countless others who have died as a result of coal-mining related illnesses.This led some people to take a mining theme for the evening.