It’s shaping up to be a busy few days. We’re singing at Dance Club East Festival this evening, we have our Summer Picnic tomorrow and then the first four of our of Summer Workshops next week.

I'm really looking forward to the Summer Picnic at Thetford (see Calendar below for more details). There'll be a sing-song of course, and karaoke, perhaps some live music, a raffle and a quiz. Warm weather has been ordered and the hall will be open for the loos and kitchen facilities.

WEBSITE

I’ve completely re-written the Members’ Area of the website but, even though you’re looking at it now, you’ll not notice many changes. The main aim was to make it more robust as the number of Pop Clubbers going onto the site at any one time has been a bit more than I’d anticipated.

You may spot the new "Upload Your Picture" section and a couple of other bug fixes, but other than the Members’ Area being a more reliable experience, probably not much more.

WORKSHOPS - VOTE FOR THE SONG

Our Workshops kick off next week. If you’ve bought your ticket you can now also vote for the song you’d like to learn (or re-learn).

Scroll down this page to Calendar, click the show/hide button and then click Workshops. There you’ll see the four song options and you just click on the one you’d most like to do.

Note that you'll only be able to vote if you've already bought a ticket.

We’ll be singing through some new Hot Hopefuls too. Some you’ll know inside out I’m sure and others may need a bit of a listen. So feel free to familiarise yourself with the original versions using the links below.

I Could Be So Good For You - Dennis Waterman

Giant - Calvin Harris and Rag’n’Bone Man

Jump (for my love) - The Pointer Sisters

Stronger - Kelly Clarkson

Dreams - Fleetwood Mac

The Power of Love - Huey Lewis & The News

I Want It That Way - Backstreet Boys

Don’t Leave Me This Way - The Communards

No Surrender - Bruce Springsteen

Tickets for each workshop are £15 and you can book your place at popclubchoir.uk/shop

Let me know which workshop you’d like to come to by adding Bungay, Bury, Ipswich or Thetford in the box marked, "Any special requests for your order," just below where you put your card details on the final screen.

ARRANGING

I’ve had a very agreeable week working on the arrangements for the new songs for next term.

In an effort to encourage your to check in with this section of the site, I'll be publishing details right here, in the Saturday Synopsis over the coming weeks.

I’m hoping to organise a recording session for anyone who’s interested in featuring on the learning tracks. Get in touch if you’d like to get involved. You’ll need to do a little bit of pre-learning with the usual resources.

QUESTIONNAIRES

Hopefully you’ve all located last term’s questionnaire. I’ll have plenty of copies with me over the next few weeks or you can print one out at poplubchoir.uk/questionnaire.pdf

Many of you have pointed out that questionnaire is something that would work well "online" and I couldn't agree more. However, I've decided to keep it paper only for now to make sure that it's avaialble to everyone in our Club and also to emphasise that it really is completely confidential. In fact, I myself don't look at them at all. Helen extracts all the information and comments and presnts it to me in a series of graphs, pie charts and tables/

NEW WHATSAPP GROUPS

Many of you have found and are using the new WhatsApp chat groups. There are now two WhatsApp groups for each location:

The first is just one-way traffic, from me to you. It’s important you join this as it’s where I let you know about any urgent or important stuff. You won’t be able to reply to any messages which also means that you won’t get hundreds of "pings" on your phone. If your WhatsApp is anything like mine, you’ll appreciate that.

The other is a more traditional chat for all members of your choir locations. Feel free to join the conversation! It's meant to be a fun place to hang out and is kindly moderated by members of the choir.

You can find links to all the WhatsApp chats above, in the Useful Information section above, right at the top of the Messages From Ed section.

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

Ed X