Summer is Icumen In, and with it, my folk choir breaks up for the holidays. To celebrate, we had an end-of-term show, with any choir member invited up to sing a song, recite a poem, or dance a belly.

I wish we’d do this more often. I love folk choir, and Jo is an amazing teacher, but what with practice being on a Monday, usually everyone is knackered once we’re done singing.

Occasionally we’ve lured people out for a drink at the murderer’s pub ‘round the corner, but it’s hard yakka. This means there are people – especially not in my tenor section – who I have sung with multiple times but I don’t even know their names.

We started with Saoirse, a fellow tenor with many anarchic children. I had no idea she wrote her own songs, but she performed one on guitar and it was absolutely beautiful: droning, nagging, finger-picked folk with an insistent melody.

Literally no one wanted to follow her – understandably – so I got up and did the cover I had been practicing on the train, There’ll Be Time Enough For Rocking When We’re Old by The Magnetic Fields.

I sang it well, forgot the words a couple of times, but remembered all the chords. People were very gentle with me, reminded me where I was up to, and we got to the end without any fuss and with plenty of joy.

“There’ll be time enough for sleeping when we’re dead” gets me every time. That songwriting bastard delivers so many masterclasses in escalation.

After me was Andrew, who very lovingly and movingly sang an old folk song which he used as a lullaby for his daughter. “It still works, and she’s now in her thirties.

There followed Martha, with a Springsteen cover, with percussion from the kid charging around upstairs. Rosehill Tavern is my favourite gig venue in Brighton, but it does come with its eccentricities.

After a break, we all sang along to an epic folk tale that went on for more verses than the singer expected. I had just taught her the German for pedestrian precinct, but this did not make it into the song.

It was time for Ruth, and belly dancing. I had asked for The Highchurches to go on after Ruth, as frankly how do you follow a recovering professional belly dancer? Saoirse, keen to return to her 30-50 feral kids, had asked me to video the dancing for her, which I agreed to, cautiously.

“Don’t worry”, said Martha. “He’ll try to keep the wanking out of shot”.

Ruth was brilliant as always, albeit absolutely winging it to some kind of death metal track she’d out on by accident.

She tried to lure myself and Louis up to dance with her, but I am still scarred by the Great 2005 Bosphorus Bellydancing Incident and refused. So did Louis, which was unusual as he’s usually the one to be roped into belly dancing, being 1/3rd of a cloud etc.

Then it was time for The Highchurches – technically gig number 5, though no Ros. We did:

Hymn For The Ruins

Even Keel

The Ballad of Doris Wu

I thought we sounded lovely, and there was something never nice being able to play acoustically, and tune to and meld to each other’s levels.

We talked at length about the one thing we weren’t supposed to talk about, which is our fiddle player’s crippling and entirely made-up cocaine habit, and explained how we’d both accidentally written songs about the end of the world.

And to finish everything off, a special treat, by popular demand: Jo, singing about the lavender singers who for generations would get up before the dawn to pick lavender in Mitcham and then walk all the way up into London to sell it to the fancy classes who wanted to keep their clothes smelling sweet.

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A lovely eve, and one I hope we do more often.

Live in or near Brighton? The Highchurches and Brighton Folk Choir are doing a gig on Sunday 28th July. Come along!