Another ridiculous song

It is now becoming a habit for me to write, and then perform, a daft song as my contribution to a monthly virtual pub session with my folk choir. 

I am unsure exactly why I do it. It began because I am no good at choosing material for this event. When the pub sessions were actually held in the pub, instead of on Zoom, I tried the occasional sea-shanty (courtesy of my husband’s very old record collection as resource) and then wrote – in a gentle jokey format – a celebration of my first year with the choir. This went down well – and has shown me that it can be quite enjoyable to create a daft song.

Now the virtual sessions are given a theme. This month it was supposed to be Hallowe’en and all things spooky. Then people added a war theme because of the proximity to Remembrance Sunday (which we won’t really be able to experience in the usual community way). This seemed to result in a combination of ghostly or war-related offerings which, whilst well-delivered as always, gave an overall gloom to the proceedings in my view. Not sure my fellow singers agreed though.

As usual, I lowered the tone with my Pumpkin song. Rather than a list of lyricist/composer/most famous band or recording artist/performance for most of the other songs – which they mostly seem to recognise and I don’t – my song prompted questions such as ‘How long did it take to write that?’. To which the answer was embarrassedly – ‘I had an idea in the shower a week ago and wrote the first couple of lines, then I had to finish all the rest of it this morning’.  

Also as usual, I can only do anything when completely up against it. To be completely honest, it wasn’t finished until mid-afternoon, but I’d had to send in a title before lunch time so from that moment on I had no choice. 

Of course, I could have cried off completely (I did that last month, but I was pretty low that week) but I know I need to press on somehow or I will end up completely useless.

I suppose it keeps me out of mischief, as my father would have said.

And talking of my father, he used to write songs as well and had some of his performed by his amateur drama group to great acclaim, so I suppose I’m just following in his footsteps somehow.