CHRISTMAS CAROL SING-ALONG
PARTY
By Rita Watts
 Ian Currie,at the keyboard; carollers Thelma Verhoven and Phoebe Coello |
The Christmas Party got off to a shaky start on Sunday December 9th. Our favourite venue wasn't available on the 8th as originally planned, due to a mix up. Perhaps because of this only twenty-one of us showed up - a disappointing number for those who organized the event. As it turned out, it proved to be the PERFECT group. We are fortunate to have a hard-core bunch of carol singers who enjoy nothing better than raising their voices in the lovely old seasonal favourites.
 Maya Benjamin, Hilda Pacheco, Freda D'Souza |
Margaret's idea of an "ice-breaker" was to give each of us the name of a carol we were expected to sing loudly and to locate anyone else singing the same tune. You can imagine the cacophony, but we got it sorted out in no time, and after that there was no stopping us. There was only one problem, however, and that was we were very short of "French Hens", "Maids A-Milking" and "Lords A-Leaping" to mention a few. Poor Ashley worked up quite a sweat doing the work of ten Leaping Lords.
The refreshment table offered a good mix of sweet and savory
eats but the most popular item was a huge pile of green chutney sandwiches
made by Freda and Brian D'Souza. You never saw anything disappear so fast.
There was coffee, tea and hot spiced apple cider to wash down the eats. Ian
Currie's golf club flask and Raywyn's mickey of spiced Baccardi certainly
pepped things up nicely.
The evening wound down with a couple of games of free Bingo. Our caller Joe Pacheco wasn't too sure of the difference between #6 and #9 and there was some confusion when it was discovered that three balls were missing. Still, all's well that end's well. We found the missing balls and the second game was made interesting when Joe began reversing the digits, e.g., 4 & 3 = 34! It all added to the general hilarity of the afternoon.
 Ian Currie and Raywyn Erickson |
Our thanks to Margaret* for her organization, to Ian and Raywyn for the music and warming liquids, to Joe for his unique and somewhat off-beat role as our Bingo caller, to Neville who took over the coffee maker with such authority and did a fine job. A big thank you also goes to all our friends who helped set up and dismantle the hall in record time and without whom we would never have had such a successful and thoroughly enjoyable party. It was a BLAST! Let's do it again this year!
*Rita really deserves more than half the credit on this one!(Margaret)