The North Wales Choral Festival 10 November 2013

Didn’t we have a lovely time the day we went to… Llandudno? Well, it’s not that far from Bangor. So, we all piled into various cars on a bright autumn Sunday morning and made our way to the seaside. Yes, indeed. It was fine enough for us not to feel cold when we took our coats off for a photo on the sea-front.

The day we went to Llandudno

We were a little intrigued by the uniforms of the other choirs. There was the red and black choir, the ones with the red shoes, the T-shirts, the other black and purple, the shades of grey … well, we’re a little conscious of this right now as this very weekend we’ve tweaked ours a little: we now sport splendid purple orchid corsages.  

Once the singing began all concern about colour coordination was gone, though when we talked about it all later we still referred to the others by their colours. It’s kind of handy.

It was a warm, friendly event. Just twelve choirs that afternoon. We were able to sit and watch them all and even as we lined up for our twelve minutes we could at least hear the choir that was on before us. The organisation was extremely stream-lined. Everything was under control. 

The MC was funny – in the sort of way that makes you groan. Yet that was exactly what was needed. You couldn’t be nervous after that. And while we waited to go on stage he was offering us jelly-babies!

Alas, we floundered in our second song. We just had to keep calm and carry on. So, we kept calm and carried on.  And when we did eventually get it nailed, and finished it, the applause was sincere and hearty. That’s how friendly an event it was. The other two songs went well and our overall score reflected this.   

These things happen. Not often, though. I’m into my seventh year (yes, really) with the choir and I think this was possibly only the second time that we’ve had to start a song again (apart form in rehearsal, of course) - and I’ve attended most of the gigs. Which is a lot.

There were some interesting pieces – a really funny arrangement of a song about classical music, a slightly different arrangement of And So It Goes from the one we’ve worked on, and a really quirky version of How Much is that Doggie?

My journey home offered a chance to get to know some other relatively new members a little better. We were an alto, two tenors and two bases. And a bit of Gilbert and Sullivan on a CD got us singing again.

It was a great day. We’ll be back. Thank you North Wales Choral Festival for a very enjoyable afternoon.