Singing in the Rain!

First posted: 16 June 2019

Well.  What can I say?  An absolutely brilliant performance by the Iver Singers, in spite of some pretty difficult circumstances. It will go down in history as one of my overriding fun singout memories of all time.  For those of you who weren't there, picture the scene... Just before we started, I went to collect my music stand, and someone had taken it home by mistake!  I borrowed a spare one but the top kept falling off during our performance.. The wind was very strong (no rude comments please) and the gazebo kept blowing away, so Jo's husband John had to stand and hold it for nearly 2 hours.  As it was far away from the audience, and it wasn't raining, we decided to sing on the playground which wasn't under cover.... During our second song, my music player stopped.  We sang the rest of Country Roads a capella, which sounded fab.  I thought it was just a little hitch...but read on...  During our 3rd song, it started to rain...just a little at first.... During our 4th song, "Waterloo", the music player stopped again.  The crowd were great, and sang and clapped along to the beat to encourage us. During the quartet's song, some children started playing with loud cap guns nearby.  This continued throughout the rest of the songs, which was quite loud and distracting. During “Build Me Up Buttercup”, the music player went wrong again (it was raining quite heavily at this point), but we continued, like the true professionals that we are.  By the time Caroline sang her song with the quartet, there was torrential rain and very blustery winds.  Everyone's words sheets were flapping around everywhere!!  I couldn't see anything as my glasses were covered with raindrops, and the music cut out halfway through and the audience clapped thinking we had finished, so we had to cut the song short (well done Iver Harmony Girls for coordinating this). We had to cut out a couple of songs and move to the gazebo where poor John (who was just wearing a T shirt!) was still standing, holding onto the pole to stop it blowing away.  The Infant School choir sang their songs beautifully, bless them, without music, as my music player had packed up altogether.  Well done Jo, for keeping your cool.   At one point, the corner of the gazebo gave way, and all the water that had  collected on top of it, fell onto John's head and all down his back.  He didn't leave his post (pun intended) for one minute.  What a star! I, for one, loved every single minute of it!  Thank you Iver Singers, for your good humoured response to a difficult situation.  Thank you audience for your love and support :) xx lots of love Sara xxx