Wentbridge House Hotel
13th December, 2024.
On a murky and dank December morning the Wakeylele band made their way along country lanes to the impressive hotel and grounds of Wentbridge House ignoring the no through route signs as they were on a mission to entertain the staff and volunteers of the Yorkshire Air Ambulance charity as they gathered for their annual dinner.
Santa hats or similar were the order of the day along with seasonal jumpers – indeed Stan revealed that his jumper was made by his by his wife using a knitting machine and it still looked good some decades later. On the hat front, I would judge Maria\’s Christmas cake design some way ahead of Chris\’s turkey on the aesthetic front.
When we were all ready and the first guests trickled through to the plush dining room, Jane snapped our band for a fine team photo although I must say the carpet design keeps reminding me of an artexed ceiling which takes the gloss off the final product so to speak.
So, the first chords of what is scheduled to be a triple- header of performances in eight days were struck and we were off with a mixed set of seasonal songs and tried and tested numbers from our still growing catalogue. The first Christmas song was titled … Christmas Song and was performed with enough aplomb to call it a success from where I was sitting at least. However, there was a bit of a blip at the beginning of Come Up and See Me when – mentioning no names – LINDA confessed to Thelma and myself, (sitting either side of her) about regularly forgetting the count leading to the opening lines of the song and asking us to remind her next time. As a result, I\’ve added rubber spurs to my Christmas list so that we can tap her ankles after the downstroke on the G. The silly season then continued with David introducing a singing cactus as a prelude to the band\’s version of Feliz Navidad – I\’m surprised it wasn\’t in the running for a Christmas number 1 hit! More tomfoolery soon followed with what is fast becoming the biggest talking point amongst the band this month following David\’s unusual request asking if any of us happened to have an inflatable hippo at home. Although Maria has since kindly donated a soft toy hippo,
It only remained to pack away our equipment together with more of the complimentary teddy bears and steel ourselves for the second leg of our triple – bill events where no doubt there will be plenty of shaking and rattling to look forward to.
Thanks as always to another command performance from David aided by his singing cactus, to Mike H for his consistent work in arranging these very enjoyable YAA events, to Jane for the proficient videoing (she occasionally reads these so I thought I had better think of a flattering word) and to Joe for doing a great job in editing the material.
