February 15th, 2024

 Dear fellow warblers

Well, rather surprisingly, despite it being  Valentine’s💘Day yesterday, we had an unexpectedly good turnout last night!!! A couple of members had succumbed to winter ailments🤒😷🤕,  a similar number were having 💐romantic 🥰 dinners with loved ones, one or two were resting after strenuous journeys back from sunny climes 🏖️ and another was rescuing his distressed damsel in a broken down car 🚗 (mega brownie points there Alan!!!) - but amazingly we still had 25 of us there happily warbling away!!!

Did this pre session WhatsApp message from one of our younger members sum up the general feeling??….“I’ll be there this week. What better way to celebrate Valentine’s Day than with you chaps 😂” - spoken like a true VoiceMaler 🥇 🥇🥇 - don’t you just love him 😍!!!

Perhaps the magnetising force was the return of Jon - to be fair Jon did get us thinking about Valentine’s Day - the round at the beginning of the evening wasn’t the usual one about beer but was that one about Roses🌹and weddings and stuff - does that count as a nod to our (deeply!!) hidden (?) romantic 💕 sides???

We got through no less than 5 songs last night - there was Pit Bull Soldiers, John Bull 🐂, Never Forgotten (aka Always Remembered), Rolling Down the River* and that great John Martyn classic, May you never - doo doo - lovely.

[*Note there’s no doubt we could have got through another 5 songs last night but progress was delayed by a long discussion on the meaning of TEU - for the avoidance of doubt a TEU is not a STI 🤕 but is a twenty foot equivalent unit, a general unit of cargo capacity used in container ships 🚢 and ports]. Well you asked!!!!

In all seriousness it was a very successful singing session and it was very pleasing (is that the right word?) to know so many of us were prepared to voluntarily risk our partners wrath by tipping up on Valentine’s Day!!!! I hope it was worth it.

So - next week is the annual dinner 🍻🍾🥩🍟🥗🍷🥂. There’s NO session at the church - the next session there is the 28th February.

So onwards and upwards VoiceMale 🎵🎶👍🏼🍻 🚀- thanks for your continued great singing - let’s try hard to learn those words off by heart as VoiceMale choirs of the past have - have a great weekend everyone. Blue skies!!!!

Cheers
Chris