Dalesmen Male Voice Choir

From the Spring 2010 Newsletter

A round up from the Chairman

Dear Friends

After a long cold winter, that most of us I`m sure would prefer to forget, it`s good to see some signs of spring slowly emerging. The choir members battled on through the winter snows to rehearsals and lo and behold it`s Easter time and we`ve already performed six concerts. Sadly our accompanist, Sian Mosley, played her last concert with us at the beginning of March. Having recently gone back to work, with two young children to look after and other musical commitments to honour, time was becoming very precious for Sian. However she has offered to help out in an emergency, which is very kind. We will miss her friendship and super piano playing.Patricia, who is replacing Sian, will be joining the choir in the summer, when she moves up from the south. So you can see that Bill has plenty of work on his hands in the meantime!

It seems an appropriate time to draw everyone`s attention to just how committed Bill has been to the Dalesmen for the past 14 years. He has played piano for our choir, for soloists and for visiting choirs with never a moan or a grumble. A good man to have around and share a joke with. Thanks for everything Bill.

The Dalesmen sang in concert at the old Strutt school in Belper for the first time, in early March. Both audience and choir members where delighted with the superb acoustic in the main hall where we sang. Remarks were rife about “wouldn`t this be a great place to rehearse “, “can`t wait to come and sing here again “. And so an idea was born. The Dalesmen already knew about the Strutts project. Some research was done and a decision was taken to ask the members if they would like to move to Strutts on a permanent basis, as a rehearsal venue. An overwhelming majority voted to make the move,

so as from April 12th our new home will be Strutts old school

.The Strutts building is run by volunteers, for the use of the local community. It is not funded by the council, but purely from monies raised by letting out its rooms. Many local groups are already setting up base there. The project needs the support of as many people as possible to help it become a vibrant community venue. Volunteers are needed to help with all manner of jobs, so if you`ve got some time to spare, why not give them a call on 01773 599993.

Finally, thanks must go to Colin Plevey for compiling this Newsletter. He and his wife Yvonne have featured in it many times, so it seemed a good idea to ask him to steer it for a while.

Many thanks Colin.

Paul Sheward

OUR PRESIDENT - From March 2009 - An Extract from Rev. Reg Dean's Memoirs including his "Recipe for a Long Life"
I have been to Eucharist this morning at St. Mary's (5 April 2007). There I feel that my old sense of recompense is right. In the Eucharist is an answer to all things. There is an answer to this mystery that has long exercised my mind. Some people call it Divine Guidance. I have always had a feeling of unworthiness when I have been thinking about these things. Why should God guide me and not everyone else besides? I can only say, "Lift up your hearts", as we said it in the Eucharist.
Thinking of ingredients recalls to mind a question that is so often put to me: What is your recipe for a long life? There is an easy answer, of course; I was born with a sound constitution. But that is not all. There is a whimsical answer. Many years ago, when I was living in Bombay (I was about 40 years old) I gave hospitality to an Indian doctor. My guest came for one night and stayed a week. On the day before he left, he said to me, "I have invented an elixir for a long life - would you like to take it?" I am naïve and find it hard to refuse, so I accepted his offer. It was a rather daunting offer, being a dark brown liquid in a large drinking glass. I drank it and here I am - over 60 years afterwards, having survived several threats of death. I still tell the story as a joke; but as I often remark, 'One never knows'. But one thing I do know and can hardly find an answer to it. I sometimes say I will write it on a postcard - my recipe that is - and send it to whoever asks for it, for the consideration of a 20-pence piece. But to be serious about a pretty serious matter, I will select a few ingredients out of a number of possibilities.
Here is ingredient No. 1 - The love of friends. Rupert Brooke wrote: From quiet homes and small beginnings Out to the undiscovered ends There's nothing worth the wear of winning Like laughter and the love of friends. There was a period in my life when I found myself abandoned in the wilderness. It was during my sixth decade. I have described it in my memoirs and have no wish to go into the misery of explaining it here. It was by my own decision that I was excluded from the Ministry of the Congregational Church. It was through Phyllis Webber and George Ducker, Head of Herbert Strutt School, that I came to start on a ten years teaching course at the Grammar School in Belper - a period that could do more than anything else to fulfil the expectations of the elixir taken 40 years before. The love of friends was becoming a vital influence in my life and has continued so ever since. Those ten years were the happiest in my whole florid existence, multiplying friendship in a way, which I have enjoyed even beyond the warp and weft of living. Since those days my friends have increased in numbers through Rotary and Probus and the Dalesmen Male Voice Choir and especially the Church. There are friends whose names are not written in this book but whose names are known in Heaven. I suppose I should not have done so many things rashly and without reason; but we cannot do everything right and I must bear the blame.
Here is ingredient No. 2 - Do things for joy and not for prize. I am writing on the 150th anniversary of Edward Elgar's birthday. After his eventful and troubled life he was awarded the Order of Merit, so was Thomas Hardy for his great contribution to English literature - and that makes me think of Charles Dickens, who, after his unparalleled contribution to the literary grandeur of our language, was awarded nothing. In my bedroom is one of the limited editions of a picture of Charles Dickens, sitting at his desk at Gads Hill, surrounded by a host of the characters he created. Dickens was no competitor; he was unique. Do all things for joy, not for prize is my second ingredient for a long life. I know I am open to controversy. Not all people think as I do, about the competitive spirit. I recall the words of Charles Hamilton Sorley, whose father was a theologian - I met his work whilst I was at College. In his poem "Song of the Ungirt Runners" he writes: We run because we must We do not run for prize We run because we like it Through the broad, bright land. Whether I was living in town or village, I would leave my house and run where the corncrakes croaked and the skylark soared. And I ran because I liked it. It is all a question of value after all. The price of restoring York Minster to its former glory over the period of ten years is about equal to the price of maintaining one footballer over the same period.
Ingredient No. 3 - Have a religion you can trust. I don't intend to suggest that it is third in the order of merit; but that it should be the centre of things. But for Jesus and the Gospel I would be an agnostic. As it is, I am a firm believer. Wednesday's Eucharist and Sunday's Choral Evensong are the highlights of my week. They say everything, always remembering that Jesus is above the heads of his reporters, but we can't have everything right in this world. There are some who say that Christianity have been tried and found wanting. That is rubbish. I say, with G. K. Chesterton, that Christianity has been found to be difficult and not tried! To put it theologically, in Christ the sufferings of mankind have been taken up into the Godhead and redeemed in the Resurrection. This is saying it in theological language and I love theological language. I remember reading a sonnet by Bishop King of Lincoln about his love of theology and I share his experience.
Ingredient No. 4 - Look for the best in people - not the worst. You have only to be in the company of some people to hear the faults of a neighbour related as though they were characteristic features of a disagreeable person. I find that distressing. The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones. So be it within Caesar; but Mark Antony would not have it so. Neither would I - it was a wise and percipient oration. I remember a joke that Teresa Hooley, the Derbyshire poet, told against herself. Introducing her to an audience, the Chairman said he was chosen because he was the only person they could find who had anything good to say about the person he was introducing! Poor man, he was a clumsy speaker, but it amused Teresa and we all knew of course, what it all meant! So I have chosen my fourth ingredient - when talking about people, to look for the best, not the worst. Eli Jenkins' prayer says it delightfully: We are not wholly bad, nor good Who live our lives under Milk Wood But thou, I know, wilt be the first To see our best side - not our worst.
Ingredient No. 5 - Become a vegetarian. There are jokes and philosophical bits about old age that I enjoy. One is: If I get there before you do, I'll did a hole and pull you through In philosophical language old age, like winter, has its own gifts to offer. In a speech I made on my 103rd birthday, in the language of the Potteries, where I was born: "I am an old crock - the spout is chipped, the lid is cracked; but the handle stays firm". One of Dickens' Christmas books is called "The Haunted Man". It has always appealed to me because of its academic setting. Paul Redlaw is the tutor at the college. He is alone in his room. The students have all gone down and the rest of the staff is on Christmas vacation. Only the cook and a serving man remain and to them Dickens' inventive genius has given the unique name of Sweidger. As he sits at his supper one night, Redlaw is haunted by the sorrows, wrongs and troubles in his life, but with disastrous consequence. I am a haunted man, haunted by the sorrows for things I have done to other people, wrongs that people have done to me and troubles that I have fallen into through my own fault and under the contrivances of my accusers. Life's tangled skein will never be unravelled. Life, as G. K. Chesterton once said, is half a dozen detective stories mixed up with a spoon. Whatever has been unravelled makes up an inscrutable pattern, but a thread of gold runs through it. I have a religion that I can trust. I must forget the ghostly bargain and learn to live with my sorrows, wrongs and trouble.