Singing, just for the fun of it.

As some of you know, I sing in a choir. And I love it - because it's impossible to sing and think about anything else. Music fills my head and reaches right down to my toes, and somehow all the bits in between join in the fun.

Unlike some choirs, we have no auditions - so no scary standing in front of everyone singing Over the Rainbow and missing the top note. But everyone can read music - so we all have a musical background, though some of it is rudimentary and unused since primary school. Our average age - is probably over sixty-five. But we are undeterred; the joy of singing together is enough to keep us meeting, week after week, in a draughty hall.

We have some wonderful singers. Everyone tries to sit close to one of them, as they can be relied upon to hit the right notes in the difficult buts. And we have some weaker singers - there is the person who is going deaf, but has perfect timing. He watches the conductor, never misses a beat, but his note can be, well, approximate. We have the enthusiast, who has forgotten the art of singing quietly, and so enjoys herself that she joins in with everyone else's part when hers is silent. Nothing will stop us enjoying ourselves  - and when we sang Mozart's Requiem in Malmesbury Abbey we surprised ourselves how wonderful we were. And we are always better in concert than we are in rehearsal - the acoustics change in a space that is full of people. In rehearsal - I hate to mention cats ...

Next Saturday, we are singing in a concert.

And we are singing O Magnum Mysterium - which is one of the most wonderful pieces of music in the world, and can make me cry when we get it right. But each part (sopranos, altos, tenors and basses) split into at least two, to make those wonderful chords. With a shortage of tenors some of the altos (including me) are trying to sing first tenor (this time I will admit to sounding like a cat, albeit a growling one)

So - here is what it should sound like.

If anyone should be coming to see us, close your eyes and pretend we sound like this. Forgive us our wobbly bits ... (classical music alert - and you can stop it at the talky bit at the end, but this is the best version of it I could find).

A bit of song and dance.

I spent the Bank Holiday at Chippenham Folk Festival. Not to avoid the Jubilee, but because it's how I always spend the late May Bank Holiday.

Some people spend the summer going from festival to festival. Every Friday they pack tents and sleeping bags, dancing kit, fiddles and accordions, and trek off to Towersey or Warwick or Cambridge. I go to just one - that's knackering enough.

Some of you may have seen Jenny Woolf's post about morris dancing (see the link here), with some great clips of dancers in all their finery. What, I wonder, do all those people do in real life? When the boots and bells are packed away, the beards trimmed, flowers plucked from hair - are they accountants? Plumbers? Nursery nurses?

And those of us singing our hearts out? This year saw me joining the chorus of: 'What can you give a nudist for his birthday?', (first sung by Gracie Field - the original is here - so you can seen how flexible the word 'folk' is used) with the same enthusiasm I recently poured into singing Zadok the Priest with a local choir. A couple of years ago I caught myself singing, 'Oh, I'm a one-eyed cormorant looking for a shag!' (sorry, it's not on youtube) and tried to connect this singing woman with the orthodox one who wanders round the supermarket and chooses between trout and salmon.

I love this disconnect. And it's possibly one of the things I love about travelling. That moment of standing a little outside myself and noticing - this is me, doing this thing, singing this song, climbing this mountain, looking for tigers. A multiple personality? No - facets of myself that I let out to play occasionally.

And you - do you go out and surprise yourself? Do you enjoy that 'bloody hell, this is me' moment, or does it send you scuttling home for tea and cake? (Sometimes I do the cake thing sometimes, too!)