The annual Spring Event, this year a music night, took place on Saturday 9th March from 7 pm for 7:30 pm at Chester Road Sports and Social Club, hosted by President Keith Weston.
President Keith Weston introduced a successful Spring Event in the form of a musical evening in the function room at Chester Road Sporting Club. The event opened with entertainment from The Valentines Ladies Choir under the direction of Pam Cunningham and accompanied by Morfudd Sinclair. The 40-strong group – only a subset of the full Choir – showed off their wide repertoire from Hungarian folk songs to Elvis Presley, with some Broadway music and barber shop quartet(!) thrown in.
As well as encouraging the audience to 'sing along' where appropriate, the choir also persuaded a number of members to accompany them by blowing bubbles at one stage – although there seemed to be a lot more blowing than bubbles, it has to be said! Perhaps the highlight of audience participation came when a number of the less-inhibited Old Carolians (ie, most of them, including the President!) donned Red Indian head-dresses and accompanied some 56 of the ladies in an energetic war dance, or was it – we are not expert in these matters – a fertility dance?
After a break for supping and socialising, the President introduced Joe Metcalf, a member of the Wyre Forest Symphony Orchestra, but tonight assuming the role of fiddler rather than violinist; Richard Woodhead, playing the guitar and singing some inventive words to well-known folk songs; and Anthony Metcalf, playing the Gaelic drum. Their repertoire consisted mainly of Irish jigs and reels, and, again, the audience was invited to sing along with some well-known numbers. On a more serious note, what a pleasure it was in this day and age to listen to an instrumental group that didn't find it necessary to feed their music through an amplifier!