The second gig for my choir.
Well it was dry but rather cold! Was glad I bought my fleece. The dress code we'd decided on was plain black, blue and/or green. I was determined to wear my green skirt from Monsoon, so had to buy plain black top, tights and shoes to go with it!! But the fleece was light blue, bit of a clash. Mindyou some people cheated with brown coats or white trainers, so we ended up looking like a bit of a motley crew.
We patiently waited for the parade to get to the top of the high street, and watched some Morris dancing and clog dancing before we got to sing. Anna changed the set slightly, so we sang 'As I me walked out one May morning, I heard a bird sing - CUCKOO!' (a round) which went down well. However 'Puit D'Amour', a French bourree (spelling?) seemed out of place with the very English dancers, plus something seemed to go wrong, could see Anna frowning as she was conducting, and the crowd losing interest. More dancing, and we sampled the racked-bright Hogs Back TEA which the Pilgrim Morris were carrying around with them! Also Fertility Cake was on offer, very tasty too.
Next we walked down to the Castle Green where the men erected the Maypole (amidst much innuendo), and the Morris teams danced around it, although not with the ribbons. We committed a faux pas by facing away from the May King and Queen and towards the crowd, though I thought that was more sensible. We sang another couple of songs; 'Hey Ho' a folky round went down well.
Next we filed into the Star, where the Chelsea/Man Utd match was on - very loud. Luckily the noise didn't penetrate to the back room, where we squeezed in to sample more beer and a very good buffet. Disappointingly, we didn't get as long a set as we'd been promised, as all the individual Morris people seemed to want to sing (some better than others). 'Bright Morning Star' and Abba's 'The Name of the Game' went down very well, and the Zulu wedding song, 'Hamba Lulu' got a huge round of applause although some of the Morris people were clearly thinking 'WTF??' ;-D
We had to vacate the pub by 2.30pm so the Morris dancer went on to frolic by the White House, whilst I caught the train to Reading to meet Bill and our CAMRA friends at the Reading Beer Festival. Was good fun too. My beer of the festival was Twickenham Spring Ale, which has fantastic tangerine and grapefruit flavours from the American hops that are used.
Was rather hung over the next day though!
