Beer & Carols 2015 great success

A very BIG THANKS to all who came and sang their little Santa Hats off on Thursday.  

The pub was well and truly throng with carolers and a merry time was had by all.  More evidence can be found on our facebook page if you do that sort of thing.

Special thanks to Shirley Danby for being persuaded to do it again and for Neil B for much of the nudging in the background, to Chris Samuel our belovéd ChoirMeister and to Ashton Keynes Village Choir and their leaders on the night for adding so much musicality to the event, and everyone who came and made it such a great community event.

Roll on next year!  But in the meantime enjoy the Yuletide and we look forward to activities in 2016!

Sing your way through Yuletide

Continuing with the "Tis the season to be singing" meme we would once again like to draw your attention to a couple of extremely worthwhile seasonal singing events and encourage you to get yourself down there. . . 

Firstly there the fabulous Prince Albert Carolling with many a Magnificent Stroudie there

singing their little socks off as well as one or two out-of-town Magnificents tagging along for the craic, as witnessed last year with quite a decent turnout out of blokes. See the pub website  http://www.theprincealbertstroud.co.uk/event/unsual-carols/ for some more details.

And not to be forgotten, if somewhat further afield there is another pocket of enthusiastic and energetic singers led by our belovéd ChoirMeister in his home town of Bradford on Avon as part of the West Gallery music and Sheffield traditions of pub carol singing.  See their handy website  http://www.bradfordonavoncarols.info/ for more details.

And finally, to top the day off you could wander along to the Ashton Keynes Village Carol Service at Holy Cross Church at 18:00 when the church will be full of candles and they are offering mulled wine and mince pies afterwards to completely get you in the festive mood after all that singing.

We hope to see as many familiar faces as possible throughout the day

A little bit of Mr T magic in AK

Hands up anyone who would like to transform a regular Thursday evening into a magical moment in time?  Ah, ok, so that's everyone would like to  . . .  well all right then, you are in the right place at the right time!

And that place was the beautiful Holy Cross Church in our very own village of Ashton Keynes, and the moment was when the remarkable Mr Stephen Taberner presided over "A very Ashton Keynes Evening" by running a singing workshop for what turned out to be quite a crowd.  

We had hoped that maybe 20 or so souls might be tempted along to the experience but in the end we had over 50 in total.  Serendipitously the pews at the end of the Church had been removed which gave us just about enough room for everyone to form a large circle then mingle around as we sang the pieces Stephen taught us.  There was a large contingent of The Magnificent AK47 crew which gave a very pleasing bottom end to the sound which was complimented by the higher tones of the very many ladies who joined the throng.

One of highlights was the warm up exercise with the Count of 4 "Hoo's" and the Count of 3 "Ha's" battling out in a wonderfully comic confrontational manner - you'll know what we mean had you been there.

The evening was a huge success with everyone appearing to enjoy the unusual Thursday night experience and chance to share a moment in time with neighbours and friends in ways you would not have previously imagined.

More pictures can be found on our Facebook page, thanks to the lovely Gilly R for her camera work.

Were you there?  Maybe you would like to email us your thoughts about the evening to themagnificentak47@gmail.com or post a comment to this blog entry?