The one thing I really love about living in England is the British sense of humour. But then what can one expect from a country that gave birth to the Goon Show, Black Adder,  Fawlty Tours, Mr Bean and Hugh Lawrie in House amongst many. And yes I do know that House is supposed to be American. But the interpretation is British.

It was manifest again on Saturday late afternoon when I sallied forth to take part in my first singing concert. I have been member of a community choir since July or so this year. A community choir is one where one can take part without the trauma of having to audition.

The last time I had sung in a choir was when the Beetles were big, Cliff Richard and The Shadows actually performed in South Africa, every kid played in a band and we damaged our backs trying to dance the Twist. That should give you some idea as to how long ago. With other words, auditioning was not an option.

The English have an unbelievably wonderful tradition in choral participation and composed music. I was fortunate enough to attend a concert of the best I have ever had the privilege to hear, Harry Christophers and The Sixteen. Although in line with English humour, there were eighteen singing.

With this kind of standard, I knew that community choiring was the only choice. Good thing too. For although I could identify the notes as being a g or an f, there was no way I had any idea how to sing them. Much re-learning has taken place in the last few months.

My re-introduction to performing chorister status was to happen at a church in Hove. I arrived half an hour after the start of the concert. It was a two and a half hour event and I thought I would save myself half an hour of it. No such luck. The event had been delayed and I was just in time for the start.

I was offered a plastic cup of mulled wine. To drink in the church. I was aghast. My experiences of church have predominantly taken place in the protestant Lutheran denomination. Drinking in church would have meant a direct route to hell, do not stop to collect anything.

A quick glance around told me that most people were drinking. Wow. So we settled into our ‘reserved’ seats. After all we were choir. We had been instructed to wear black and festive bits. So I had fished out a little silver angel from our Xmas tree decoration box to adorn my somber attire.

A quick glance at the program and I saw there were four choirs singing. The first choir, an all girl group performing with a pianist was called Lipsynch. Only in England, I thought. What a name. They sang well. However, whereas we had prepared three songs, this lot didn’t know when to stop. After many a song, they finally concluded their bit. On their own it would have been wonderful, but there was a lot to follow.

It always surprises me that people have the need to hear themselves talk. So we had poems and verses and stories from novels and all sorts of in between bits. Finally the next choir was announced. Their name? Naked Voices. What? I waited with bated breath. But no. No naked people snuck onto the stage. It seemed that the naked referred more to the fact that they did not have a pianist nor a conductor.

More chit chat stuff and finally it was our turn. Our little choir, which generally during practice is about 50 strong, managed a meager twenty or so. Our choir mistress couldn’t attend. But in her wisdom she had decided that three new songs should be imbibed for this concert.

This in itself was probably not too bad. But the light on stage in the church was so poor that we couldn’t read our music and after one rehearsal, it wasn’t going to be that easy to sing along. Somehow we managed! It’s amazing what a loud piano accompaniment can do to hide the bad parts.

During our rehearsals we discovered that our dear, jolly American choir leader had picked three songs that were extremely lacking in English words.  So this English choir, with one South African as the token foreigner, sang a song that mainly had the words ‘Didi bom’ in it, a Swahili song and something with a lot of ‘Hamba’ in it which made me think of my hometown Durban and Zulu. As one choir member wistfully said: ‘It would have been nice to sing something in English!’.

The next part of the concert was Xmas carols to be sung by the audience with our choir leading the singing. This is a peculiarity of the English church system that the congregation is not to be trusted to know how to follow the organist or pianist, even with popular Xmas carols.  A few bodies have to stand in front to ‘lead’ the singing. Most amusing.

After our little leadership story, the final act arrived. I had tried to persuade my friend that the pub across the road, which one could access via an underground tunnel (??) looked mighty inviting. Apparently, the underground walk way was there to hide worshipers from view who were sneaking off for a pint of the good stuff. It wasn’t right to be seen to go from sampling the word of god to sampling the nectar of gods.

I was persuaded to stay and what a good idea. The best was kept for last. We had a men’s choir, the Brighton and Hove Actually Gay Men’s Choir. They were fabulous. From Wagner to Westlife. New interpretations, excellent voices and loads of hard work with a few camp bits thrown in for fun made it a great show. I was thankful that I had decided to wait another half hour for a pint of the best.