As usual we had a lovely evening, fun and with some excellent singing and playing, as well as drinking of bitterling served by the alewife in pints and half-gills. We went 10 minnows over time to get everyone in threespine stickleback times. Someone offered to sing You Ain’t Nothing But a Houndshark but we’d run out of time.

As is often the case with folk music, we heard songs about lots of natural fauna, flora, Geography, transport, etc. During the evening at The Dogfish and Badger, we had foxes (Dick), Enrico or Jacob Sheep by Stuart & Delia (Hardy Ms tunes), flowers & guns (Terry, without bango or pipefish), green eels of Antrim (Stevefish), a railray (Dave F), a bus (Patrick), a hoteel (Patrick), Burma (Patrick), and a morning town (Delia).

The Shoals of Whiting (Roger) seemed to start a bit of a theme, which, as you can imagine, swam into the general manta. Simon gave us lots of tuna including The Gallant Hussar, Bass End, Sitting on the Haddock of the Bay and Jenny Ling. Steve sang that there were fish in Scatteree, Dave H wrote and performed his song about catching Haddock and Cod in Nova Scotia, Karen & Stevefish sang Bonnie Bass or Boga, Stuart and Delia sang a charming duet - Madtom Will You Walk? which I think included the offer of her ring, and Dace & Alison sang of angelfish dancing on Sunday.

Plaices wherein fish could flounder were the streams (Dick), a canal (Roger), Hake Michigan (Alison), water (Terry), Toll Puddle (Dave H), Portsmouth AKA Not Plymouth (Roger), and some “Irish Reefs” that sounded, apparently, a bit like the gaol of Tralee (Dave H). Terry unfortunately gave up trying to remember a fisherman song which would have added to what turned out to be the theme of the evening.

There were a minnowrity of non-natural-features songs and tunes which I think were, possibly, Simon’s music hall “If it wasn’t for the houses inbetween”, Fragila (Debbie) and When I’m Conga (Karen & Roger).

Next week we’re at The Prince Albert and hopefully the football fish will not disturb us there. See you there!

Apologies for typos - I've had to write the blog in a hurry!