A while back, the Mole (conspicuous by his absence these days – he’s gone underground) reported a rather odd evening in the New Inn…. who remembers it?
The Mole made a rare visit to the pub last Thursday evening. It started out like any other post Gwynfa evening at the pub. However it ended with many of the regulars backing out of the door and some very worried locals asking Sian from behind the bar if she had ‘spiked’ the camera club! The proverbial blue touch paper was lit by a conversation about certain foundation garments which in turn led to an old joke about the rawhide bra (for those not familiar with this old joke, it “heads ’em up and moves ’em out”). At this point, someone who shall remain nameless (but was in fact Jeff) started singing “Rolling rolling rolling …..”. And everyone joined in for a full rendition of ‘Rawhide’.
This moment sparked what can only be described as ‘Singalonga-Gwynfa Volume 1’ with song after song being trotted out. At this point dear old Moley feels like he should be in one of those Ronco adverts on TV which says…. “hear such classics as”… ‘Dedicated To The One I Love’, ‘Speedy Gonzales’, ‘Summer Nights’ (complete with ‘wella wella wella OOO’), ‘Hey Jude’, ‘Zippardy Doo Dah’ (Heidis’ speciality), ‘Delilah’, ‘Don’t Dilly Dally’ and many, many more…. (but not by the original artists).
When the repertoire became a little exhausted it degenerated into that old army song which has the chorus ‘Did you ever see such a funny thing before’. Dennis came to the fore at this point and the Mole remembers something about Uncle Mike, a Motorbike and riding around the Gower… but it all became a bit of a blur about this time…
To the casual observer it seems that knowing the lyrics was optional. For example ‘Hey Jude’ contained a lot of confusion about whether we were ‘making it bad’ or indeed ‘sad’ or if we were letting her ‘under our skin’ or ‘into our heart’. The song was cut short (mercifully) by the ensemble going into “Better better better better better better, ohhhhh” straight after the first verse. It of course ended with a rousing naaaaa na na nanan naaaaaaaa crescendo (as everyone knew the words to that bit), the section being enlivened by a particularly energetic ‘Judeee judeeee judeee judeeee awwwww’ by Jeff and Sheila.
Talking of Jeff, he also on several occasions found the need to leap to his feet and do a frankly hysterical little ‘cockney thumbs in braces’ jig… particularly to ‘My old man said follow the van’. (What is a cock linnet anyway?) Also particularly enjoyable was his rendition of the intro to Speedy Gonzales… Laaaaaaaaa, lala lala lala laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa….
All in all the Mole found it very entertaining but sadly no one had a video camera. We still don’t know what they put in the drinks!
If you remember a particular classic not mentioned here, please tell the Mole. His memory isn’t what it once was.