New paintings and regular art updates.
Traditional hot cross buns, soft sweet fruited buns marked with a cross. Eaten generally at Easter to commemorate Jesus dying on the cross. I like the normal ones but they have started coming up with chocolate ones, or even ones with a creme egg in the middle. I’ve also heard of ones with cheddar cheese! Might as well have a cheese scone.
Tonight’s choir practice was a monthly event, based at Hanley Library in Stoke on Trent. I almost missed it because of my car problems but friends gave me a lift. It was due to be the last practice but the librarian has got extra funding for an extra 3 months. X
We sing various songs including north American Indian, south African and Maori pieces as well as traditional English songs, sometime we tackle Welsh songs like Canon Lan. We had a cheerful evening, I even tried to play the kazoo. It’s good to socialise and singing is good for mental health and memory.
On our walk today round Westport Lake we incorporated a bit of the Trent and Mersey canal. We saw a few canal barges as we walked along the towpath. It made me think of a song we sing at choir which goes ‘fifteen miles on the Erie canal’. Most of the boats were painted dull blues and greys but there was a more traditionally painted cafe boat in primarily green and red but with yellow and white details too. It made me smile to see it.
This year for Halloween there have been far more filters on my phone to create strange faces and spooky images. It’s not something I would normally do, but just for a laugh I decided to choose four that I thought were the silliest and most frightful. (I say frightful because I don’t think they are very frightening). Apologies to anyone of a nervous disposition. I think Halloween coincides with a Celtic holiday called Samhain but I don’t know the history of either tradition really. I guess it’s a chance to have a party before the full gloom of the winter season envelops us. Next stop Christmas here in the UK.
Wassailing is a tradition to celebrate the New year. People would go from door to door knocking on them to rouse their occupants.
The local Morris Dancing troupe started to organise Penkhull Wassail a few years ago. Our Choir joined in and now quite a lot of people walk around the boundaries of penkhull with lighted (flaming) torches. We visit an ancient apple tree in a garden nearby, the Morris dancers dance and we get a drink of hot cider.. Then we continue around and sing and dance outside the local pubs.. . Just for fun. We end up at the local village hall for soup. Sometimes we stop for a barn dance afterwards.
We sing various songs including the Penkhull Wassail and the Gower and the Gloucester Wassail.
I guess some of the songs will be on YouTube.
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Mallaband-Brown