Category: Uncategorized

A lovely, peaceful and well Christmas to you all! Julie was planning to sing something lovely, but as she’s recovering from covid the job has fallen to me instead.

This is a classic Paddy Roberts song about the ways of a certain sort of Englishman, and also about viruses. It seems very appropriate for the season…

From the Wikipedia I learn that Paddy (1910-1975) was born in Natal and was a lawyer and a pilot with the RAF in World War II. He had a number of songwriting successes in the 1950s and ’60s, wrote songs for films and released a number of CDs and LPs of his own often risqué songs.

Moonlight Serenade. It’s an American swing-era popular song originally composed as a band piece by Glenn Miller. Mitchell Parish added the lyrics later. It’s just made for a voice like Julie’s, but it’s also a Jeffries duet concertina favourite of mine. I wonder whether it ever played this particular number in the hands of an earlier owner…

A striking version of the Golden Vanity that Fred Hamer collected in Oxfordshire from a Miss A Bidder, who in turn learned it from her grandmother, who lived on the Isle of Dogs, London.

Julie learned Polly Vaughan from AL Lloyd’s book for children, The Golden City.

The Pride of Kildare, which Gav learned from a recording of Pop Maynard.