Annual Outing 2008
The Choir, visiting a cultural establishment in Gloucester.
'Gandalf's Hat' - Risca Male Choir's Annual Outing, Gloucester 2008
Each year Risca Male Choir embarks on an Annual Summer Trip - a kind of Jolly Boys' Outing, if you will. And each year weeks of meetings and sub-meetings take place beforehand to try and ascertain what will be the chosen venue and what will be the flimsy cultural pretence used to justify the visit. Everyone knows that all this hokum is a smoke-screen and that the trip always turns into an all day pub crawl, but nevertheless this process of consultation always takes place. This year Gloucester was chosen as the venue, and I believe that brass rubbing in the cathedral was mooted as the reason for the visit. But would there be a J D Wetherspoons in the crypt, we all wondered?
Hats the way to do it.
Each year there is also a theme of sorts, and this year it was decided everyone on the trip would have to wear a funny hat - and as the coach disgorged us at Gloucester Docks I don’t know what the good citizens of this fair city made of us. The beer-hounds in the bass section soon picked up the scent of cheap alcohol, so we quickly left the docks and shimmied through the main shopping centre in our array of strange headgear - cowboy hats, pointy wizard hats, miner's helmets, snap-brimmed fedoras, sombreros, bowlers, pork pie hats, baseball caps, homburgs, cute woolly Heidi hats, and many more. To the innocent bystander our march through Gloucester must have looked like a grotesque walking parody of Ladies' Day at Royal Ascot. Our pace was forever quickening and we paid scant attention to the Medieval and Tudor period gabled and half-timbered houses that rose above us. We ignored the distant tower of the cathedral and the brasses that lay therein. We were more interested in the louche razzle dazzle and spangled interior of 'The Water Poet' - one of Gloucester's Wetherspoons pubs - and its decadent spread of inexpensive ales and lagers.
We spent a couple of hours in the beer garden putting the world to rights. However, the aimless badinage soon turned into a serious therapy session for those of us who had recently been involved in four performances of 'Carbon 12' - an exhilarating but fiendishly difficult piece of contemporary choral music written by Errolyn Wallen. Her composition tells the story of the Welsh Valleys and their people's ambivalent relationship to coal. One of our choristers Gordon Holley is an ex-miner and consequently he had been given a significant amount of media coverage. This exposure had gone to his head and made him into something of a prima donna and coal bore. Now, in the sweltering beer garden, he held court and pontificated in his rich baritone voice and told even more stories about the darkness and dankness of the bowels of the earth and the glittering anthracite to be found there. The beer was flowing and so was Gordon. He was unstoppable, and the sun was blazing down and the heat was getting to us. People were starting to shuffle and look uncomfortable. Gordon demanded a punkah wallah. We needed a change of scenery, so we decided to return to the docks. Last beers were hastily glugged. Suitably replete, the menagerie moved on.
We discovered to our horror that a beer festival was in full swing on the docks so we thought a boat trip might be a wiser option. So thirty men in silly hats boarded the sturdy vessel for what they hoped would be a serene watery journey through verdant meadows and past parish churches, pastoral farms and little lines of sportive wood run wild. Unfortunately, the trip didn't quite live up to these bucolic dreams because we were soon propelled into Gloucester's dark industrial underbelly - an unremittingly bleak landscape of wharfs, warehouses and storage units. We all huddled close to one of our second tenors, Dai Pavarotti, because he wore a wizard's tall pointy hat and so he might be able to give us guidance as we sailed through this gloomy Land of Mordor. Pav gazed skywards and he seemed to thrust an imaginary sturdy staff into the air. His hat twitched. 'Let's give 'em a few songs' he announced. And so we did.
The captain of the boat seemed pleased to have a choir on board, and as we approached the lock gates he asked us over his tannoy if we might sing a song to the lock-keeper to keep him sweet. We panicked. We trawled through our musical memories in the hope of finding some relevant ditty. The search was forlorn. We turned to Gandalf for guidance. He stood majestically on the prow and raised an arm in the air and then began a low chant which grew in an eerie crescendo. Soon the rest of the choir also raised their arms and joined in the magical chant and as we entered the lock the startled keeper was met with not a gentle folk song but the frenzied baying of 'Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?'
When we began our return journey the mood lightened and our singing became less threatening. The earlier fear dissipated and we began to sing some gentler songs. A couple celebrating their golden wedding anniversary were treated to a medley of romantic tunes, much to their delight. The day seemed to be set fair. We were to discover however that joy in this world is transitory and can quickly turn to misery. Disaster struck. A sudden swirl of air snatched Pav's hat and threw it into the murky canal. He was distraught. That hat had been with him for many years and it was a sad loss. This seemed to be a bad omen and it cast a dark cloud across the day. We all felt Pav's loss as we disembarked from the boat and it was with a weary tread that we entered the real ale festival on the dockside. We stood around in small groups in our silly hats disconsolately sipping our warm, flat, over-priced beer. Pav, hatless, looked inconsolable.
A couple celebrating their golden wedding anniversary were treated to a medley of romantic tunes.
But how quickly can sadness turn to joy. The hat was found. Either the strange eddies of Gloucester docks or perhaps a deeper, more benevolent, force had washed the hat back into the basin and allowed it to be fished out of its watery grave. Pav was ecstatic and he put the hat, though sodden, straight back on his head. For the rest of the day he wore that hat, despite the steady drip of canal water onto his shoulders, back and face. Now everyone was joyous because the evil Sauron had been defeated. The mood lightened. Now the day’s singing could begin in earnest. I think we were a little loud for some of the bearded and pot-bellied real ale aficionados sipping their halves of 'Old Expensive', but most of the crowd loved us and kept shouting for more. I think we were offered a gig at Kingsholm, singing in front of The Shed. The only sour moment came when one of our basses Howard Morgan refused to drink any of the beers on offer because there was nothing over 8.5% in strength.
The recipient of a 95th birthday serenade.
It was now early evening and so we made our way to 'The New Inn' where we planned to spend the remainder of the night. This pub, right in the heart of Gloucester, is a beautiful building. It has four different bars but because the weather was still pleasant we decided to congregate in the outside central courtyard. There was a large gathering of locals so we decided to give them some Welsh culture. Some of them appeared to be from the Forest (of Dean, that is) and they stared at us with lazy Hobbit eyes. Zulus to our beleaguered garrison. For the next four hours we sang. We repeated lots of songs, but no-one really minded. Among the crowd of listeners there was a large family having a meal to celebrate the 95th birthday of their matriarch. She had a great night and loved being serenaded by us. She even joined in with a few of the racier numbers. The family thanked us for providing such good entertainment, and all for free.
Being part of a great choir like Risca can be wonderful fun and, although formal concerts are important to us, there is something special and uplifting about spontaneous sing-songs, and it is wonderful to see and hear people's reactions to our singing. And that night it seemed to us, as darkness descended and we launched into our farewell song to our new friends from Gloucester, that the wonder of Gandalf's hat was working once more. We filled the night air with our enchanting music and magically transformed a small, cobbled courtyard into a resonating cathedral of sound.
Paul Baglow, Second Tenor
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