The end of another week. A week of traffic jams and humidity.
Rainy City can be less comfortable at 18 degrees than the Costa del Sol at 35
and is often grey even when warm. So how pleasant to spend a few hours enjoying
the fresh air in the colourful gardens of this delightful National Trust
property on a warm but not hot Friday evening. Dunham Massey: deer feeding,
rabbits on the lawn, well-looked after flowerbeds, evening perfumes and birds
trying to outperform us. The odd reminder that we’re not so far from the
airport hardly mattered at all.
We sang those songs that somehow go with a venue like this,
some of them several times:
Blue Skies
Deep River
Imagine
Josuha
Kum Ba Yah
Longer
Love is the Sweetest
Thing
Memories
Wasma
Wonderful World
For sheer joy there was also Dance in the Street. A couple of gently-paced performances of Kiss the Girl weren’t out of place
either. We did one of our quirkier ones too: well there was woodland so there
might have been teddy-bears picnicking. Who knows? But no worries, because we didn’t start singing
until after six o’clock when they’d all been taken home to bed. The Long and Winding Road went down well
and though we’ve performed it before in public, we seemed more confident with it
this time.
We sang in front of the summer house, in the formal garden, in
the courtyard and in the rose garden. It was a different acoustic experience in
each place. There were enough of us for our voices to carry when we sang in the
open. In the more sheltered spots we could hear ourselves more clearly. The
sound in the courtyard was particularly pleasing, though the foot-stamping in Wasma didn’t quite work on the grass in
the formal garden. Under the dome in the rose garden we swivelled round like weather-house
dolls to face one way and then the other. At every spot the audience seemed to
appear from nowhere but they looked as if they enjoyed the performance.
In the end, we sang from 6.30 until 8.30 with only a few
short breaks. We didn’t really notice we were tired until we set off back to our
cars. No wonder we didn’t mind working hard, though, for it was such a treat to
sing in such lovely surroundings. So, we’ve been allowed to perform in yet another
remarkable venue.
Thank you for having us, Dunham Massey. Can we come back again
soon?
