I'm happy to report that France remains as beautiful as ever but I'm exited about being back with you all on Monday. We've a busy week ahead of us with gigs on Wednesday and Thursday and of course, our usual Monday, Wednesday and Thursday rehearsals.

Suffolk Show

I'll be collecting the tickets for The Suffolk Show on Monday. So, those of you who are coming to our Bury St Edmunds rehearsal on Monday 27th May will be able to collect any tickets you've ordered at that rehearsal.

If there's anyone from Croxton who is planning on coming on Monday and who'd be happy to distribute tickets to Croxton-based members then that'd also work. Feel free to get in touch if you've got any thoughts on that. Contact details at the bottom of this message as always.

After that, you'll be able either to collect them from my house (343 Colchester Road, IP4 4SE) if you want to get them in advance and go into the show for a mooch around before we sing. Failing that, we can meet an hour or so before our performance in the car park, on the day of the Show itself.

D Day

We'll be helping the village of Croxton celebrate the 80th Anniversary of D Day with a special performance (incorporated into our usual Thursday rehearsal) of We'll Meet Again and White Cliffs of Dover. Recordings, scores and lyrics are here, in the Downloads area, in a folder called D Day Songs.

I think we're unlikely – without risking getting terribly behind – to do any formal learning of these so if you have some time to listen to them on your own, that'd be great.

We'll Meet Again is a simple, two-part arrangement. If you're looking at the scores, Part 1 is the melody and Part 2 has some harmonies. I'm imagining upper voices singing Part 1 and lower voices singing the Part 2, harmonies. But that said, there's no reason why the harmony could not be sung by higher voices. I've made all audio recordings available to all of you so feel free to have a listen and take your pick.

White Cliffs of Dover is just a straight sing through, with no harmonies. Again, have a listen to familiarise yourself with the rhythms.

Songs for this week

We'll be learning the rest of Time After Time and then, time (after time) allowing, we'll run through a few of the tunes we're singing at The Suffolk Show.

Schedule for the rest of term

We're now on Week Six so there'll be five more rehearsals for all groups this term, running for the next five weeks and without me whizzing off on holiday any more. You can consider our "extra" rehearsal last week at Bury St Edmunds as just that, an extra. That is, it won't count as one of the ten rehearsals for the term so Bury, like Ipswich and Thetford, will have five more rehearsals this term.

Tuesday Night Choir

I'm in the process of sorting a venue for our Tuesday night choir which will be in the Beccles/Bungay area. It's proving a bit tricky to find a suitable venue – best is perhaps the enemy of the good – but I hope to have this finalised soon.

End of Term Social

As we pass the mid-point of the term, my thoughts are turning to our end-of-term Social. My feeling is that we'll move it around and do something slightly different each term. Perhaps a BBQ somewhere in Bury St Edmunds at the end of the summer term and then move to Thetford for our Christmas one.

Let me know if you have any ideas. And if you'd like to get involved in any aspect of the organising, then I'd particularly love to hear from you. You certainly don't want me anywhere near a BBQ for example!

Songs and Workshops

Finally, a little heads up as to my thoughts with regards to songs. I'm aware that many of you have not been there for all the rehearsals, and even more have not been there from day one. So, there'll be lots of songs that lots of you have never done any formal learning of. My solution to this is to run some Saturday workshops across the region over the summer where we'll focus on just one song.

I'm hoping this will allow you to learn or re-learn some stuff and also to keep singing over the summer break. The format will be similar to our April Workshop in Bungay, where we covered Just Give Me A Reason. Each will run for three hours. Dates, locations and songs will be announced over the next few weeks.

As always, if you have any questions or suggestions, you can email me at ed@popclubchoir.uk, or whatsapp, call or text on 07973 110075.

Ed X