The evening nearly got off to a disastrous start when our glorious leader realised that she had left her music file at home. A quick ‘blues and twos’ dash back to May Lodge followed, but unfortunately she did make it back in time, so our hugely anticipated early entry to the bar was shattered and we had to literally ‘sing for our sup(per). Undeterred, the packed house senwadedendered with aplomb to open the rehearsal after our customary neck clicking and shoulder cracking warm up. Even better was to follow when ‘Amazing Grace’ was greeted with the accolade of being a ‘showstopper’ right at the start of the show! One wonders why we would have to stop the show at that particular point, but I will leave you all to reach your own conclusion on that one… Overall, I think Monday went pretty well and we did learn quite a number of useful things. For example, Bev’s son is pretty handy with a camera, which may be useful for the Platinum Jubilee celebrations. Unfortunately, he is based in Germany, but as Paul pointed out, as long as he has a good long distance lens…… Bev also starred later on in the evening when she was asked to stand to demonstrate to us what the colour red looks like. Maybe Fiona thought she was still teaching, although I am sure I heard from somewhere in the sopranos ‘aaah, so that’s red’. But what of the singing? Well, pretty good really, except for ‘the song that shall not be named’ which was going swimmingly, so to speak, until it sprang a leak beneath the waterline and we all know what happened next. It wasn’t so much a case of ‘women and children first’ as ‘abandon ship’. But, not to worry, the instructions are as follows: ‘check your face’; ‘sing out loud’; ‘don’t worry about the harmonies’. It’s not quite as catchy as ‘hands;space;face’, but I reckon if we stick to it, we won’t go far wrong (will we?) Before finishing with a normal speed version of’FOG’ we dipped our toes into the three Jubilee additions - ‘Jerusalem’, ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ and ‘God Save the Queen’ which were ok and , providing we have a proper version, will take just a little polishing before hitting our normal standard. And so, finally, we were able to crawl to the bar, parched and exhausted and in desperate need of refreshment which was so tantalisingly close so much earlier in the evening. Better late than never, I suppose. In harmony Haz