Death warmed up

I am slightly nervous about this week's blog report. The main reason is that I was quite justifiably roasted for an error I made (now corrected) in my previous report. Secondly because Derek typically took my error as a challenge and sang several versions of similar and not-so-similar songs, in an attempt to make the point about my error, or our "little domestic" as he put it. It was all in good humour of course but gives me a challenge since it was the difficulty of working out the background to what he sang last time that led to the error in the first place. I make no guarantees I have it right this week!

Richard took up the mantle of MC, and started us off himself with The Girl I Left Behind Me.

Twelfth Night, the Deep South and Fred Jordan's boots

Fred Jordan's boots

We weren't quite as much of a throng as the previous week but almost everyone was singing or otherwise performing. We were joined in the bar by two people not directly involved in the session. There's nothing at all wrong with that, and I saw them responding to some of the performances, which has to be a good thing.

This was the nearest Dragon session to twelfth night, so there were some appropriate songs for that, and continuing the theme of New Year. We also had a mini-theme of Fred Jordan.

Maggie being unwell, Mike was to leave at half time again, so Richard did the duties of MC.

Derek kicked off proceedings with Lavender's blue (Roud 3483) which is connected with the celebration of Twelfth Night and the choosing of the king and queen during the festival. Robert Herrick's poem Twelfe-Night, or King and Queene (published 1648) describes the election of king and queen by bean and pea in a plum cake, and the homage done to them by the draining of wassail bowls of "lamb's-wool", a drink of sugar, nutmeg, ginger and ale. Note that Derek uses "fiddle faddle" rather than "dilly dilly" in the song.