Christmas carols, mistletoe and tinsel
Please, wish me luck! Hartlepool Male Voice Choir Christmas concert at the Borough Hall will take place on Friday 13th! This will be my third one and, although I feel a lot more confident than the last two years, there is always a chance that I will not remember the opening lyrics until I hear the first note of the fourteen songs we’re singing.
It has been a good year for the Choir. To celebrate our sixtieth anniversary, we were joined by Joe McElderry for our concert in June. We’ve also made quite a few appearances at various events, including the Waterfront Festival.
A couple of weeks ago, we sang at a party organised by the Royal Signals at the famous Adelphi hotel in Liverpool. Along with a few choir members, I ventured into the legendary Cavern Club where the Beatles first cut their teeth in the early sixties. During our visit, a solo artist sang “I Feel Fine” which we were going to perform that same evening. I felt like jumping on stage and accompanying him but I decided that my vocal cords might not take two performances in one day. Next year promises to be just as busy. We’ve even been invited to sing at a couple of weddings next year.
Decorating skills.
One of Krimo’s ex-waitresses, Zoe posted a 2012 photograph (below) showcasing my lack of decorating skills, with the caption “Restaurant owner by night, Interior Decorator by day, ha!” Looking at that photo, my first memory of being involved in Christmas decorations goes all the way back to my first Christmas working at the Coliseum in Peterlee in 1980. I discovered a kind of tinsel that came out twisted as you pulled it out of the box. It was an amazing invention which helped me whizz through the restaurant, pulling and stapling the tinsel all around the large room in less than fifteen minutes. I carried that tradition with me to Seaton Carew where my skills seemed to please Christmas revellers for many years.
Today, looking back at this picture, I am glad that I leave our Christmas decorating to Karen. I just limit my contribution to lifting the decorations down from the loft.
Seasons in the sun.Before Algeria gained its independence from France in 1962, towns and villages rang to the sounds of “Noël, Noël”, and festive patisserie windows were laden full with Yule logs. Charcoal burners filled our main square with aromatic smoke from roasting chestnuts.
At nursery and primary school, I sang French Christmas carols and often enjoyed a slice of “gâteau des rois”.
While a few well-to-do Algerians celebrated a “non-religious” Christmas at home and showered their children with the latest toys, the Muslim majority went about the 25th December like it was just another day.
The one and only Christmas present I ever got as a kid, a red trolleybus, was given to me by my aunt and her cosmopolitan doctor husband, who on many occasions had helped my mother out morally and financially when my father was in some Saharan concentration camp during the war of liberation against the French.
