St Mary's Soiree - March 2007

Thanks to the wealth of talent at St Mary's, an evening of home-grown entertainment was always likely to be a success, and so this was.

The evening started with the handbell ringers playing several pieces for us, including 'What Shall We Do With the Drunken Sailor?" at an ever increasing tempo for their grand finale. We usually only get to hear this group play at Christmas, so it was really good to hear something different from them. Members of the band took it in turns to tell us a little more about handbell ringing, thus filling in quite a lot of gaps in the audience's knowledge.

The choir took to the floor to sing: 'Immortal, Invisible' was given a fresh set of lyrics which we're unlikely to hear in church on Sunday, and John Shaw had written a psalm specially for the occasion. You aren't likely to hear that on Sunday either! An entertaining look at our choral leaders for sure!

On to more serious stuff with Keith Champion playing the flute (beautifully, as always) and Andrew Sykes played a Mozart Sonata, despite a crippling attack of gout. He had been planning to play the Moonlight Sonata until he spied Dennis Murdoch in the audience and chickened out!

A delicious spread was served for our supper, giving us further opportunity to participate in some of the quiz games that Pat and Peter Loosely had put together to tax our little grey cells.

Paul Harding was the sole representative of The Motley Crew so the dramatic performance of the evening was reduced to a monologue.

The Social Committee then really tried to tax our little grey cells with 'Call My Bluff', pitting the audience against the teams. So, you thought you trusted your fellow parishioners, huh? Never believe a word they say again, except Barbara Owen who was the only person to tell the truth all evening!

So, when Barbara tells you that 'you really must come along to the Murder Mystery Evening that is being organised this summer- it will be great', you know that she's not lying! More details available shortly.

Thank you to everyone who took part in this fun evening, and especially to the Social and Catering Committees who organised it all. We had a great time!