SINGING TIMES
-
Mike Jenkins (U.K.)
When I was sixteen
I became a bass-baritone.
Seemed like the day before
I’d been a boy soprano
Performing ‘Once in Royal David’s City’
And my mother all ready
To ship me off to King’s College school
(Except, we never had the money!).
Apart from sleeping in the crypt
Of Coventry’s new cathedral
( More like a Halloween trip),
The best times of our school choir
Were the annual carol treks
(Back then , Christmas was yearly).
That’s when we’d walk together
In the streets by our Grammar
Singing ‘Once in Royal….’ ( that again!),
‘Good King Wenceslas’ , ‘In the Bleak
Midwinter’….
Lots of good seasonal cheer!
With our dripping candles
We were far more interested
In spying bedroom windows
And , of course, the terminus
Of the Head’s house with hot mince pies.
But I was always singing anyway :
One girl I fancied
Serenaded with ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’
As I morphed into Art Garfunkel
And my hair began to curl.
Sang ‘West Side Stories’ to an audience of
one :
Our cat hid under the sofa.
****