Laurieston Hall. Sunday 5th September (last day)

********* Please start on Thursdays post if you have not read the rest yet **********

Breakfast duty this morning, so I started early by sweeping the floor in the hall area.. After last nights bonfire and people tracking grass through, so it looked much better when I had done!

Ali Burns came to do the second workshop with us and took us through a newish song of hers that has quite a difficult alto part! Her songs are lovely - she tries her best to give each part a nice tune to sing whilst putting them all together to create a lovely overall sound.

Ali Burns in action

After lunch, I would have liked to go see the red kites being fed, but no one who had transport wanted to go. Instead, I and a German/Irish girl spent the afternoon with one of the residents, a lady called Marion who taught us how to 'drop spin' that's spinning wool using a spindle that you suspend from the wool you slowly tease out and spin into thread then wind a little round the spindle and keep going. I had a great time and managed to spin a yard or so of rather bumpy length!

My first attempt at drop spinning!




Basket with wool and a drop spindle in

Tea was at 6.30 as usual. The tables had been re-arranged into a u shape so we could have a 'banquet' for our last evening. We all dressed up. Some from the dressing up collection in the sunny room, some like me in their own stuff. I wore my lovely mediaeval blue dress, my new green cape and my new 'green goddess' mask I purchased earlier in the summer. Everyone looked marvellous.. Some very funny!

Who could it be?

Some strange costumes!

For tea we had baked potato wedges, some kind of bake with tomatoes on the top, green beans, a mushroom sauce (yuk) and some odd thing with ?hot beetroot in it (double yuk!!) oh, we also had roast peppers that were nice.

I finished off my bottle of wine (It's taken me all three nights to drink it.. Not too bad!)
Dessert was some lovely chocolate biscuits and ice cream.
After a gap, final night festivities began in the billard room. We all sat round on sofas and chairs and played pass the parcel. When the music stopped, the forfit was for someone to think of a song that fitted the theme on the note. We sang all sorts.. Themes ranged from travel, to political all the way to mythological, the latter being a part rendition of Puff the Magic Dragon! The prize in the middle was a bar of soap!!

Voca Loca, our sister choir from Belfast (not Dublin, sorry Curlybap, whoever you are, who pointed this out to me) sang two lovely songs, then Body of sound sang two of theirs.

Next came a drama! We had a very creative rendition of The Quangle Wangles Hat!



The final organised event of the night was a team game. Three teams were each given a song to sing, and given a style in which to sing it. I formed part of the audience/judging panel!

The first team had to sing nursery rhymes in the style of the winning volley ball team .. It got worse and funnier as the teams went on!!!

By the time prizes had been awarded ( one to each team, of course) it was 11.15pm so I decided to finish packing, shower then sleep. I'm sure that singing went on well into the night but I was tired.

It was a wonderful weekend.

It took us about 5 hours to get back home.. we left at about midday after a rather tearful parting from our friends and the beautiful hall.

I was sad to leave, but very happy to be back home with my lovely Douglas and my lovely puddies.