On arrival I found a gaming group in the upstairs room and, after checking with the landlord, found our dates had not yet been confirmed for the year. We decamped instead to Sandria’s house (many thanks to her, and to her partner who had planned a quiet night in alone with the Winter Olympics!). Some of us went on ahead to set up while others waited to taxi latecomers. There were nine of us, including two new singers from Brighton and Lewes who said they had been nervous about coming along for the first time but felt very welcomed and enjoyed the unexpected adventure!
I’d brought along word sheets for 26 songs, mainly concerning spring and the outdoors, plus a few from the general list that I keep on rotation throughout the year and a couple of newer items. With no imminent events we took it in turns to choose.
The first three were old favourites “Hares on the Mountain”, “Oak Tree Song” and “Searching for Lambs”. Somebody then chose from the list a song we had not done at Lewes previously but which I and others had sung at the “Belloc, Broadwood and Beyond” project a few years ago – the whimsical Hilaire Belloc song “Delicate Flower” which has nothing to do with flowers and a lot to do with the alleged treachery of women! In a similar courtly vein, next was “Love and the Ball” concerning stoolball, the predecessor of cricket, which in Regency times was played on the green outside “Ye Olde King & Queen pub” where some of us attended the Brighton sessions of the original South Downs Society project. We have singers in the group who played stoolball at school in Uckfield and at Woodingdean in Brighton (one of tonight’s new singers) as well as someone’s friend who still plays it in Plumpton. The jaunty tune (by Alan Wheeler from our Chichester group, based on an earlier poem) seems well suited to the quaint language and the love story in the poem.
As we started later than usual, we had a very brief tea and comfort break then carried on, leaving any notices to be dealt with later via email. We continued with two more seasonal songs, “Birds on the Spray” from the Copper Family and the traditional “May Day Carol”, then “Nightingale” (again, nothing really to do with the bird, but about an apparently married soldier, his fiddle and his sweetheart), and another outdoors song “Run of the Downs” with words by Rudyard Kipling describing several prominent local heights, set to a tune by Amaryllis Gunn from our Worthing group. We rounded off the evening with “Oldland Mill”, a recent song from 2009 by local singer-songwriter Stuart Leon concerning the restored mill at Keymer, where we frequently perform this song. This led to a discussion about folic acid being added to flour before we said our goodbyes and headed home.
Our dates have now been confirmed at the pub for March to November (we will discuss options for December nearer the time). The next session will therefore be on Monday March 16th when we will continue with mainly spring songs. More singers are always welcome, regardless of experience.
Tina
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