After much leg shaking, arm shaking and body wobbling, we got down to the serious business of drinking pop, scoffing our fish’n’chips - with salt and vinegar, of course - all soothed down with ice cream and cherries. Delish! Unfortunately, I felt so full after all of that, that I struggled to sing properly for most of the evening. No comments required, thank you. Anyway, didn’t you think that this week’s rehearsal was like watching the draw for the World Cup being made or being at a Reveal Party (whatever one of those is), or waiting for the results on Strictly? Wasn’t it exciting discovering which songs had made the cut and were proposed to be part of our set at the forthcoming Platinum Jubilee celebrations? Did your choice make it through? Would you have chosen this one or that one? Was there something there that you would never have voted for? Not only that, we then had to run them past our glorious leader to see if they passed muster. In fact, I was so excited, I could hardly sing….. I think, by and large, we had pretty much a full house, although one inglorious effort did rather stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. ‘The Prayer’ started off a tad wobbly and required a little re-learning, but by the time we had given it a good going over, sounded really rather good. ‘Anthem’ sailed through, along with ‘Sing x 3’ and ‘FOG’; ‘Amazing Grace’, ‘Perfect’ and ‘ROL’ are close enough given that we still have a few weeks left to polish them up. But, oh dear, oh dear, oh dear, what happened to ‘Beyond The Sea’??? I don’t know about a car crash, but I reckon it was more of a multi car pile up on the M1 in freezing fog! Sad to say, I think the rot set in once the tenors and basses had their starring moment and promptly set off on the wrong note, thus throwing the rest of the choir completely out of kilter. Either that or Matthew was playing a totally different tune, but I know which option my money’s on…. I guess we will have to see what the head judge decides, but I am not holding my breath. Never mind, I thought it was a pretty decent effort and to have so many tunes almost up to performance standard in the few short months we have had, is a real testimony to the progress we have made, especially as we still have others up our sleeves, if needed. Sometimes, the road has indeed been ‘long and winding’ (ooh, maybe we could learn that one?), but now it is surely all downhill - maybe not the best choice of words, but I think you know what I mean. So, having said it’s all downhill, it’s now onwards and upwards towards our grand performance in front of the 5m naked members of the Hutton Cranswick community. Can’t wait. Oh, and we also have to learn ‘Land of Hope and Glory’, ‘Jerusalem’ and ‘God Save the Queen’ in 4 part harmony, without the words in the next 4 weeks. Piece of cake. In harmony Haz