The "official" clapping started two weeks earlier. Georgia and I clapped from the front door step the following week, and then I saw a fb video of Avtar playing dhol in his street, and I said I would play every week to thank the frontline till this crisis was over. First week I thought I was playing on my own, till Robin Redbreast swooped down, settled on next door's huge sycamore and joined in with me.
On the 2nd April 2020, the UK followed Spain, and clapped and banged on their pots and pans, a massive public thank you to their health workers. Georgia and I joined them, a very emotional moment. Then I saw that my friend and colleague, Avtar, was out and about playing dhol for the frontline on his street, and so I vowed that I would do the same on steelpans. 
First time I played on my own, after that we were a duo, then when the UK clap founder declared clapping would be at an end, I thought, I do get it, but it is not an at end for NHS workers, our frontline, so I decided to continue, made this notice for the front window, and dedicated our panclapping to a different frontline every week. Wanda, who had been playing with her daughter [and sometimes her husband!] outside their house joined me, and give or take flu, Covid or a damaged collarbone, we have been united ever since. Joined regularly by Trish, Milly and Adele, and occasionally by Julia, Satinder, Ella, Isha, Anita, Melita, Julie and Harvey, me and Her Indoors plan to play to say thankyou to all the frontlines until it is over, and until we don't need to remind people that medical workers, bus drivers, shopkeepers, taxi-drivers, tradespeople, school teachers and support workers, care home workers, refuse collectors and all all all all the rest put their lives on the line to keep this country ticking over.
Week 179. Wade in the water. Trish and Victoria. For the NHS. FrontlineFrontgarden
Week 177 of the Frontline Frontgarden. 24 August 2023. Liza Jane. We were Victoria Wanda and Trish still clapping for the underpaid nurses and . . . .
May 18th. Panclap 163 was for SHEnanigans in Armley. They did a workshop; they were so good that we used their playing for the NHS.
2 March 2023 Week 152 The Can Can. Kicking high for the NHS
Frontlinegarden Week 149 We have She'll be coming Round the Mountain in A. Sadly A includes F# and C#, upon which notes the spotlights are clipped. Ah well, you play some, you lose some! Trish had to leave early to sell ice creams at a church [as you do], so we played a few minutes early, and I reran my version of the melody when Sue and pal arrived, and now we included Patch racing round a freezing garden in hos socks [as you do]. Yee hah! Playing for all the service and caring professions and now including the fabulous nurses.
Week 148 February 1 Wednesday 2023. Iko Iko
Week 147 January 26 2023. the Trout. yes this is a repeat but our first two attempts were so dire that we decided on a sfe one before we froze in that Frontlinegarden
Week 146 January 19 2023. Whatever the song originally was we will never know as the camera in my mobile phone went on a goslomo!
Week 145 January 12 2023 Hey That's no way to stop Goodbye.
Week 14 January 5 2023 Norwegian Wood with guest player Sian from Southampton
Week 143 Frontlinegarden. December 29 2022. Da Doo Ron Ron. Victoria [solo - eek!]. Playing for those workers in A and E going over and above time and time again in in the most stressful of circumstances.
Week 142 Frontlinegarden. Victoria Trish Sylvia. Rocking Around the Christmas Tree. December 22/23 2022
Week 141 Frontlinegarden. December 15 2022. Once in Royal David's City. Victoria Trish
Week 140 Frontlinegarden. December 8 2022. Let It Snow. Victoria Trish Sylvia.
Week 139. Frontlinegarden. Victoria Trish. Santa Natale.
Week 138. 24 November. Always on Mind. Victoria Sylvia
Week 137 FrontlineGarden. Brown Girl in the FRing. Victoria Trish
Week 136. Price Tag. Frontlinegarden
Week 135. Frontline Garden. You Cant do that 'Ere. Victoria Trish Wanda
Week 134. 27 October. Mozart 40. In Trinidad! Victoria Keith Gerard.
Week 133. Leaving on a Jet Plane. Victoria Sylvia.
Week 132. October 13 2022. Stairway to Heaven.
Week 131. O Sinnerman. Victoria Wanda Trish.
Week 130. September 29. Pirates of t.he Caribbean. Victoria and Trish.
Week 129. 22 September 2022. Spring by Vivialdi [not all of it!]. Frontline being outr union reps, officers and activists
Week 128. 18 Sepgtember 2022. Toreador Song. Our frontline this week is the dentist, in particlar the one who changed all his Queen's funeral Monday appointments to the Saturday.
Week 127 FrontlineGarden 8 September Indiana Jones. Victoria Wanda Trish
Someone I used to Know. In the Frontlinegarden. Week 126. Sylvia and Victoria. September 1 2022
August 26 Diamonds are Forever
August 18 2022 Frontline panclap is in Hudderfield Top Club. The students having their first steelpan workshop. Playing for all the stupidly overstretched workers in A and E.
Frontline Frontgarden Week 123 August 11 2022, this week in a static in Filey, just me and the daughter
August 4 Victoria Wanda Adele Trish on pans Sylvia on saucepan Frontline Frontgarden 122
Week 121 Frontline Frontgarden July 28 2022
Frontline Frontgarden Week 120 July 21 2022
July 14 2022 Week 119 Amazing Grace got accidentally recorded in slow motion, so Mandy and Wanda recorded the tune separately, and I put these audio tracks over the slomo visuals.
St James Infirmary an old blues song and a Leeds hospital. In the Frontlinegarden for the frontline workers. 7 Juy 2022
Frontlinegarden June 30 2022. The crisis hasn't ended. The NHS is still underfunded, and it is official that privatisation is causing patients to die [who wouldn't have otherwise]. We are playing Heartbeat.
23 June 2022 If You're Happy and You Know It. You're Not with this apology for a government
23 June 2022 If you're happy, you can't be living in Tory, let's starve the public services of cash Britain.
Week 115 Frontline Frontgarden 16 June 2022
Frontline Frontgarden Week 114 9 June 2022
2022 2 June we are marking the Jubilee Bank Holiday with la Marseillaise. This week the usual crew of Victoria Wanda Adele and Trish are joined by Milly, and on percussion, Sylvia is joined by Sian. There's money for cake for those who already have bread. We can thank Marie-Antoinette for this suggestion, and then hope that Apres moi, le deluge is also on the horizon!
26 May 2022 the Frontlinegarden crew plays On Top pf Old Smokey. Given the news about partying at Number 10, we are sparing a thought for the cleaners there.
Frontline garden 19 May 2022 All Through the Night. for dearly beloved and deeply underfunded NHS
12 May 2022, in the Frontlinegarden. Having an inflamed gum, I nipped down the chemist and the pharmacist himself offered reassuring advice and nice numbing tincture. There when you need them [takes pressure off A and E etc etc]
5 May 2022. Me Adele and Sylvia playing Marianne and Kookaburra for the NHS
28 April 2022 We are in the Frontgarden thinking of the Frontline, playing Down by the Riverside
21 April 2022. We are playing Gimme That Old Time Religion. I had just returned from London on train with almost no staff on it. what if a passenger is ill! What if a fight breaks out! Doesn't the refreshment bar make a long journey more bearable! So the frontline is the train staff who work under these difficult circumstances.
14 April 2022. two really easy versions of Barcarolle and Skaters Waltz. Thoi king of the staff at A and E, still working under these ridiculous circumstances, keeping people alive, reassuring others.
7 April 2022. It is two years this week since me [Victoria] and the robin duetted on Moonriver. To celebrate the anniversary, not that this should be an anniversary to celebrate!] we have eight players and eight/nine tunes. We are me, Wanda, Trish, Adele, Milly, Kirsty, Georgia [guesting on one] with Sylvia, John and Gilda [from NHS Rescue]
It is our penultimate garden performance before the two anniversary of that day in April 2020 when it was just me and Robin Redbreast playing Moonriver. And the thing is that it is not over. It is not over till it is over for everyone! Around the whole wide world. So this tune is for the global vaccinators
Week 103. March 24 2022. An old, yet timeless Shadows classic. Our frontline today are the doctors and medical staff featured this week on tele, and driven to despair, having to let patients wait two years for ops that would have been much much simpler had they been done immediately.
Week 101, Go Down Moses. Playing the NHS. March 10
March 3 2022, Week 100 of the Frontline Frontgarden Squad. We played the The Long Road, a Russian folk song [made into a UK pop hit in 1968]. Our frontline, given that Putin has sent an army into Ukraine, are all those medical workers dealing with dangers of war and pandemic at the same time.
Week 99 saw me and Danielle playing the Heron from Brecon in Y Bala, by Llyn Tegid [that's Lake Bala to you lot!]. This was a pointless yet highly amusing exercise in battling the wind, and the following week in Leeds we had another stab at it.
This is Week 97 of the FrontlineGarden, and we aren't sight-reading for a change! And whaddaya you think! We played El Condor Pasa, and it sounded great. You can't beat rehearsing!
Frontline Frontgarden Week 96 Song of Delhi Tongawallah [rickshaw driver]. Frontline are the people who put out the tv programme on how This government snaffled all the vaccines for itself.
19 January 2022. Week 94. Song is an old Irish song, the Month of May, the melody of which both Brendan Behan and Bob Dylan "borrowed".
The Month of May is in the new Foxwood Songsheet book, Songs of the British isles [3 tunes per country].
12 January. Week 93 of the Frontline Frontgarden. Sospan Fach [Little Saucepan]. The frontline this week is over-stretched and under-recognised hospital staff.
The song is in my new Foxwood Songbook: Songs of the British Isles which contains 3 songs from each of the four countries.
Week 92. Panclapping for all NHS workers getting up close and personal with people dying before their time while our PM changes the wallpaper.
Week 91, that is nearly two years that the NHS workers get paid peanuts while the apology for a governemtn tries to pay Dyson and Dido vast coconuts for absolutely no good reason.
Week 90 of the Frontline, we did five tunes. Magic Moments here is for the scientists.
Week 89. Dec 16th. Victoria Trish Adele. Frontline: doctors, nurses, hospital workers generally, school and community workers.
9 December Week 88. Victoria Wanda Trish Adele. Frontline is this week's Questiontime audience, some of whom had lost loved ones while No 10 was partying. The spoke as one with eloquence.
2 December 2021 Our frontline is the backline, an incompetent and corrupt government that hampers everything that the frontlines are trying to do.
Week 86 Mud November 25 2021. Victoria and Wanda
Week 85. Frontlinegarden November 18 2021. Victoria and Adele playing O What a Beautiful Morning for the NHS.
Week 84 of the Frontlinegarden. Our frontline are the train staff wading through carriages of unmasked travellers.
November 4 2021 was Week 83 of playing Lockdown in the frontgarden. My frontline - fire-crews and ambulance workers, cos, hey, just because it's a pandemic doesn't mean we should avoid extra pressure on our underpaid and overworked services!
Week 82 sees me on my own in the rain and also not noticing that the intended video magically turned itself into a blurred still picture. Maya held up a large umbrella while I replayed the tune, slightly worse than previously [you'll have to take my word for that! Lol!]. My frontline this evening are all those medicos and unions who have been banging on about reintroducing masks and social distancing [and all those schools who didn't wait for this apology for a government to make a decision to take these actions.
Week 81 of the Frontline Garden 21 October 2021. This is Mad World with bits missing. And the song is too! Our frontline this week is the British Medical Association who are demanding a return to social distancing, masks and other measures before this it is too late! In the European league of who has most ill people and most deaths we are streets ahead!
Week 80 of our Frontlinergarden 14 October 2021. It's Bye Bye Love. It's Victoria Wanda Trish, and the frontline are GPS whose fault it seems to be that aren't enough of them.
Week 79 Frontline Garden. 7 October 2021. We were Victoria Wanda Adele Trish. Played Imagine [an obviously incomplete songsheet as I found out as I bounded eagerly onto Line 4!]. As ever our frontline is the NHS and Caring Professions.
Week 78. 30 September 2021. Men of Harlech. We were Victoria, Wanda, Adele, Trish. and our frontline again is the NHS and all caring professions.
Week 77. 23 September 2021. Victoria Wanda Milly Trish Sylvia Adele. Eye of the Tiger [minus intro]. Frontline is all those journalists [and the courageous tenants] exposing the squalor that so many council,housing tenants are living in.
Week 76, 16 September 2021, When the Ship Comes in. We were Victoria, Wanda, Adele, Milly, Trish, Sylvia, and our frontline this week are all the parents who are complaining out loud to the press, to whoever will listen about the cruel, cruel use of isolation booths in schools and academies [name for schools whose building grounds and even children and teachers have been away to private companies, usually with no or limited educational experience], and too often in cases where children are already suffering KNOWN mental health issues.
Week 75 of Frontline Garden. 9 September 2021. Raining in my Heart, We were Victoria, Milly, Trish, Sylvia.
Week 74 pf the Frontline Garden Panclap. Here is the Ash Grove. Players were Victoria Milly Trish and Sylvia
Week 73 of Frontgarden Frontline. 26 August 2021. Our frontline this week are all the summer school activity workers feeding and entertaining children all this country, and particularly the LS14 Project crew and particularly Naomi and friends.
Week 72 Frontgarden Frontline, 19 August. this week's frontline are the aid workers in Afghanistan.
Week 71 Singing the Blue 12 August 2021. Our frontline today are community activists.
Week 70 The Frontgarden this week is actually in the Royal Hospital School near Ipswich. Her Indoors was Libby. Miriam filmed us. We played I Got Shoes, an old gospel tune. The Frontline this week was the dinner staff and the cleaning staff who kept all of us fed and clean while we made and taught music.
Week 69 Frontline Frontgarden 29 July. Victoria Milly Wanda Trish Adele. Jamaican Rumba. Our frontline are the brave men and women of the RNLI whose only crime seems to be to save strangers from drowning. A bit like the NHS only at sea.
22 July Frontline Frontgarden Week 68. Our frontline this week are the rugby teams who declined the offer to play rugby in the UK and spread the Covid all over the world. A spokesperson on British radio commented that the British public would be disappointed by their selfishness. well, as a member of the British public I applaud them and their act, which eventually ended in the world cup being postponed and thus saving loads of lives. [I do wonder why, for head of state, NZ got Jacinder and we got a second rate comedian.]
Week 67 Frontline Frontgarden 15 July Blue Moon. Our front;ine this week are the footballers whop refused to visit Downing Street.
Frontgarden Frontline Week 68 8 July 2021. Frontline today are educations unions desperately fighting to make schools safer.
Week 65 1 July 2021. Frontline this week are refuse workers, council and voluntary, who work in or are drafted in to work in Hyde Park which now tops the charts fort Covid cases in the whole of the country as the entitled ones [the students] leave a year's worth of rubbish on the pavements, as they move out. Sadly they don't move out of Leeds, but just find another shared house to infect with Covid and fill up with debtis.
Week 64. 24 June 2021. Wanda had to be an angel of mercy and rescue the father again, so my frontline this week are all those Wandas, who after their working day, when they need and deserve a rest, found themselves take on their carer jobs. Perhaps better funding of the NHS might alleviate the situation!
Week 63. 17 June. Milly has left us, after a a year of this and that,for proper paid theatre work in Sheffield. It is her birthday today we played it, as well as Madonna's little, but cute four-chorder. Our front line this week are the activitists who fight, and fight and fight for Palestinian rights.
Week 62. 10 June. The frontline this week is Peter Stefanovich, relentessly calling out this inadequate and corrupt government, who has allowed this Covid to zip through the country over and over. Just as we play until the crisis is over, then Peter will go on with his research and his videos till it is over,
Week 61 Frontline Frontgarden. 3 June 2021. Cradle Song by Brahms. Frontline this week are hospital cleaners.
Week 60, 27 May 2021, frontline this week is a bit of a joke - is Dominic Cummings for openly acknowledging that ten of thousands people died needlessly, and naming a couple of well-known politicians as liar and incompetent etc etc etc - no good attributes. Obviously his credentials and his reasons aren't great, but hey ho, you get what you can take.
Week 59, 20 May 2021, our frontline this week is/are grassroots activitists, and having watched, and cried my way through "Subnormal" about the racist labelling of black children back in the day, I would name Bernard Croad for his amazing powerful, understated work.
Week 58, May 13 2021. . It's International Nurses Day. How appropriate. So our frontline is Indian nurses.
Week 57, 6 May 2021. Our frontline is Music teachers. Recovering from Covid, [for our mental health and emotional well-being] we need our Arts teachers even more, so why is Higher Ed Music teaching funding being cut by 50%!
Week 56 2021, 29 April 2021, our frontline this week are all those Indian frontline medical workers, volunteers, and families, desperately trying to save lives in unbearable circumstances.
April 22 2021. Week 55. It is Earth Day so here's to Greta!
Week 54 15 April 2021, deciated to all those running foodbanks from their schools, places of worship, community centres, wherever.
Week 51 25 March 2021. St Lucia was written for the outgoing presernt of the Geographical Society, and the Royal Park Steel Pandas wereinvited to premier it at Leeds Uni in here honour. this week we celebrate local activists in particular S, S and A. One documents away, one filmed and this week confronted students urinated in full public view behind the tennis courts, one steadily goes round the Moorland area painting out grafitti, all three trying to make our lives in Hyde Park a little more bearable.
This is Week 52 of our Frontline Panclapping.
ThisnFrontline Week 53 8 April 2021, dedicated to all those courageous education union reps who stood for all our children and all their colleagues when they declared schools unsafe in January [when they were], some reps now facing disciplinaries for trying to save lives!
18 March 2021. Sue and I did the slow handclap. Also playing were Milly Trish. Frontline this week are park keepers of Woodhouse Moor, to whom it falls to "tidy up" the park after the entitled ones trash it, as they do the minute the sun also. As the park partygoers don't appear to observe social distancing, clearing up after them must involve personal danger. I think they should not be asked to do this, and the students should have to picnic in their own mess.
11 March 2021. We were me, Sylvia, Wanda, Trish, Milly, Wanda, and our frontline was definitely the nurses. They just saved the whole of the world. They are exhausted; some died; this government offered them 1% payrise. Why this is so insulting is obvious, and obviously they were in our thoughts and we gave the government the slow handclap, and we will go on doing that till the nursews get the recognition they deserve [may be clapping a while!]
5 March 2021 We were me, Sylvia, Julie Trish-Milly-Aurelia. The frontline this week are the hard-working organisers of the TUC Stand Up to Racism conference, and combine that long but inspiring Saturday with the programme on how institutional racism is killing our health workers, introduced by actor, David Harewood, well I wish theybwere both compulsory viewing.
25 February 2021. Me, Sylvia, Trish, Millie, Aurelia, Satinder. Wanda was occupied with dad-minding, Julia said she couldn't get the hang of it; I opined it didn't stop the others! This week our frontline is school secretaries/receptionists, who are, I am afraid the most likely to catch Covid, Enjoy Lili.
Week 46 18 February 2021. Playing for the couriers, whose working conditions, as I heard from people on the ground in York and Sheffield, could be better! Understatement. WE were me, Sue [dancing in the dark], Wanda, Satinder, Milly, Julia, Trish. A smorgasbord od styles and tempi.
Week 45. 11 February 2021. We were me, Milly, Sylvia, Trish, Ella, Julia, and racing in at last minute, Satinder. I wouldn't call these the most seamless of edits! Our frontlines were the usual suspects, keeping on keeping on: NHS workers, teachers and ALL other school workers, bus and taxi drivers, police who are frontline facing, meeting members of the public who may or may not wear masks, self isolate, socially distance . .
Week 44. 4 February.We were me, Wanda, Milly, Ella, Sylvia, Trish, Julia. Our frontline this evening is the Council's Anti-Social Tea, desperately understaffed, considerably the incredible number of student parties that residents are presently having to endure in Leeds 6.
Week 43 28 January 2021. Still separated by New Lockdown, me Trish Wanda Milly still strutting their stuff. Our frontline this week is the teachers, without adequate PPE or any vaccinations yet, in school all week teaching, creating lessons for those at home, and then having to send their own children to another school's frontline.
Week 42 January 21 2021. Sylvia appeared in the front street sans percussion, but didn't realise till I was just about to count in Lol. Back chez eux were Wanda, Satinder and Milly and Trish. This was a very personal frontline dedication. Natalie, Georgia and I were joined by Annette's daughter [and our friend], Claudia to play I Will Always Love You at Annette's funeral at Trinity Church, Harehills. All the tributes confirmed our experience, that all the things that Annette organised, put in place and made us all do were life-changing and life-enhancing. She was kindness and determination personified.
Week 40. January 7th 2021. The new lockdown finds us on the back street, me with neighbours Sylvia, Ursula and Sue. Them Indoors are indoors at home sending over their performances. Played Streets of Laredo cos I just love that tune, amd Marching Through Georgia tothank the voters of that American state for possibly saving the world!
Week 41. January 7 2021. Me and Sylvia rocking Flintstones. our frontline this evening are the "meeja" who went to town exposing the corrupt and greedy outsourced free meal providers. Evidence, methinks, of the downside of capitalism.
Week 38 Christmas Eve 2020. Me, Wanda, Trish, Milly, Julia change to a daytime slot, and as we are playing a double coincidence walks along the road - Maryam, my ex-student/Milly's ex-classmate! Our frontline today are the lorry drivers stuck over Christmas on the A20.
Frontline Frontgarden: Week 37. 17 December 2020. Our frontline this week is Yorkshire Cat Rescue [specifically Keighley branch] who not only rescued this lovely kitten and found it a home [mine], but rescued its new older brother from the sadness of bereavement [and two weeks later Dibble has stopped howling and his fur is softening up again, and little Squeak is being slowly accepted inot the fold]. At a time of increased mental issues pets are more important than ever.
Dcember 10th 2020: Week 36 of Frontline Front Garden: we were me Wanda Trish Millie Julia, and our we dedicated our songs this week to the frontline that is the NEU, my union who nationally is fighting like crazy, as in arguing the case that high schools spread Covid. They argue, we argue that we need more staff to make smaller classes, more buildings to maker less people per class, rotas, compulsory mask wearing etc etc to make schools safer. If nothing else close schools for Christmas. Sadly this apology for a government doesn't experts, and Covid has spread.
December 3rd 2020, and this was Week 35 Pan Clapping for the Frontgarden Frontline.. We were me Wanda Trish and Millie, and it was mighty loud rain, as you can hear.
Frontline Frontgarden Week 34. 26 November 2020. My frontline this week was three small acts of kindness - from Colin who came round and bought Milly's kit off her immedicately that she needed it -from Mig who advised Jackie on the complexity of student loan, in short that the whole system was incompetence itself, and - Milly who stood in very last minute at the Civic Hall when I was forced into a day's isolation.
Week 33. 19th November 2020 Why doesnt a governement listen to the experts in the field! Myself, as a teacher, and an NEU and MU rep, I did think that the NEU’s call for a proper circuit break which close schools for another week after half term would have made sense. But God help this government if they ever took advice from a trades union (who only ever wanted to make things better), so I will continue to take music lessons from behind my weird echoey visor. My frontline this evening: it has to be the mother and daughter combo that is Trish and Millie, for all the emotional, political and moral support that they give me (especially while her indoors is incapacitated), and because, musically they make me sound good! We played one verse of This Train is Bound for Glory, but glory was not what this tune was headed for, so I cut the other verses as we slid out of time with ourselves! Lol. Then we did Frere Jacques.
This Train is Bound for Glory is in Foxwood Songbook, Gospel Collection, and Frere Jacques is in Kids Collection.
Week 32 12 November 2020. This is Victoria, Milly and Trish, and our frontline this evening is NEU, a union for all school staff: teachers, caretakers, TAs, the lot, who are protecting their staff as hard as they can and fighting for safer schools, and/or safer education.
This is our 34th Frontline Frontgarden Pan Clapping. 26 November 2020. We were me Trish and Millie. Wanda was poorly. and it was Bonfire Night so you can hear the fireworks in the background. My front line this evening are Diesel Logic from Garforth who took this injector thingy is from my van, applied sandpaper, or whatever it is they actually do, and made them as good as new, and then A4 at Sheepscar who screwed the injector seal thingies back into the engine, and now it doesn’t smoke anymore when we set off. Two local businesses, not ripping us off, making sure that we keep moving and not polluting Leeds during these difficult times.
Frontline Frontgarden Week 28. 15 October 2020. This is the first time [and I hope the last!] that I forgot to put the video on selfie mode. I found six minutes or so of my hall. So included pics from other Foxwood Panyard's bands' members.
Frontline Frontgarden. Week 27. 8 October 2020. Me [Victoria].Milly and Trish.
Week 24. 17th September 2020. Me and Wanda were joined by Trisha (again!) this evening. I went to Town today for the first time since Lockdown. I was struck by how easily so many people were wearing masks. Thus also shocked by how many weren’t. It being five months since I had last ventured this far south, I had a few things that I needed. I also bought one thing that I didn’t need! Lol! So I dedicate this evening’s tunes to the shopkeepers and shop assistants, who seem to have to put up with a lot, including people who don’t think they need to wear masks, and in particular to Toni at Mx Speilman Kirkgate Market for her patience and determination.
Week 21 27th August 2020. Well Her Indoors is better! Whoop whoop! Toady we are playing Move Over Darling and Sloop John B for the frontline. It rained on the rehearsal and it is raining on our performance. As the plan is never to repeat a tune, we are doing a song about a boat to represent these watery conditions. Dedicating tonight’s performances to all us teachers who have been grappling with more technology than we might have liked in order to teach, and to school workers and students who will be grappling to work with PPE, which I may add will SAVE LIVES! And the question is Why the dressing gowns? Think the parrot is obvious!
Week 20 on the 2oth August. Just had to include Anita and Melita before they hit the homeland of Croatia. It was a lovely day, and I only sobbed a little bit at the end. Her Indoors was poorly today, so had to make do with Millie. Am I am kidding? Seeing MillieS was emotional enough. Am already in tears that Anita and Melita are relocating to Anita’s homeland of Croatia next month, and Wanda hasn’t missed a day since we started, so this evening we are are playing for the Arts Front Line, and for the Friends Frontline. You know that bit when you think: I have shelter, I have food, I have the air that I breathe, so what’s the point? Apart from staying alive for staying alive‘s sake, the arts, and music give us a reason, gives me a reason., and having friends gives me a reason. So here’s to Wanda (hope you better soon), Millie (not seen you since A Christmas Carol in Derby) and Anita and Melita (so gonna miss you, so gonna find a reason to visit Croatia as soon as . . .)
Week 19. 13 August 2020
This crisis is not over and me and ‘er are still amusing the neighbours with our front garden antics. This week we were joined by mother and daughter act: Julia and Ella, and by a masked invader who we believe was Trish. Today we are thinking of the A Level students who were downgraded to suit some bizarre statistic. It was very heartening to note that universities trusted teachers’ grades. Do they think perhaps that teachers know their own students abilities and achievements better than an algorithm? As both an English and then a Music high school teacher, I went to endless moderation meetings with teachers from other schools and within my own department so that we were all agreed on our standards. If you were very unlucky you got sent a whole of assignments from a random school somewhere else in the country and you had to mark them to check we all knew what we were doing. And if you were unlucky enough to be a single parent on a half term camping holiday in Withensea in a howling gale, these exam papers were a burden you could have done without. Anyway welcome to us this evening going west and down under.
Frontline Frontgarden Week 18. 6 August 2020. We were Victoria Wanda Trish, for the rehearsal only, Ashley. I was wondering if Wanda could actually become Pondlady, but sadly [for the sake of the comedy] she recovered herself in time. Lol.
Week 17. 30th July 2020.
So this week me and her (who was nursing a injured clavicle) were joined by Trish. This week we are doing Chariots of Fire for the Olympics, not now, as it now happens, happening in a Japanese town nowhere near you. The Olympics, imperfect as they are do at least start from the basis of friendly competition between countries, so we decided are on balance worth celebrating. And this week we are also remembering that whereas most of us don’t know anyone who died from Covid, it does happen. And so (what is now left of) the Flood is for Brian Pette, and all the others who didn’t survive. It say on my window LEST WE FORGET. Let us not forget.
Week 16. 23rd July 2020. This evening me and her were joined by Harvey and Julie. We are still playing-clapping for the NHS, and really for all those who go on doing their jobs day after day, and somehow are taken for granted. We should also take a moment to consider how black, Asian and ethnic minority NHS workers are at greatest risk of contracting this evil virus, and suffering most from it, and how this incompetent/uncaring government does nothing to help.
Week 15. 16 July 2020. Me and her again. We used a beach windbreak as a back drop for Oh I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside, which had no connection at all with John Brown’s Body. The meter-reading man turned up as we rehearsing, so we dedicate our tunes this week to the frontliners who come into our houses and gardens reading meters not knowing who or what to expect - certainly not a mini-steelband playing seaside songs!
Week 14: 9th July 2020. So bit of a pitch invasion here this evening! One minute it’s me and her quietly irritating the neighbours on our own, reminding them that it’s not all over. Next minute Roundhay moves into Hyde Park! Too exciting. Today we taking our hats off, but keeping the umbrellas up, nearly (!) to the care workers, who left their own families for weeks on end to care for other people people’s parents, only to find that this apology for a human being, let alone a prime minister is now blaming these selfless individuals for his mistakes, and his mistakes with somebody else’s parents’ deaths! The first tune was ruined by my clunking away on the single guitar so I cropped it a bit. Lol!
FRontline Frontgarden: Week 13. 2 July 2020. We did also Can't Get You out of my head, but thankfully we have now!
Frontline Frontgarden: Week 12. 25 June 2020 It is still a crisis. We are still playing what we call “Sight-reading in Public”. It is more of a crisis since Cummings sent himself to Durham in order to sow some seeds of discontent. Here's a homage to B Johnson, Nowhere Man. One local effect of the crisis is that, wot wit clubs being closed, those with the plummy accents have descended on our back street in to order to wreck our night’s sleep for the third time in row. Everybody else is setting the world record for litter on Woodhouse Moor, and wot wit there being no toilets the litter is many and varied. So here’s a shout to those volunteers who brave the virus and litter-pick on the mornings after. If any southern parents are reading this would they mind collecting their spoilt brats as soon as possible, but I would advise wearing visors and masks in the car back home. It’s Covid Central round here.
Frontline Frontgarden: Week 11. 18 June 2020. Me and her Indoors having a bit of laugh here. Our frontline today is the Black Lives Matter. movement. Think some people are still missing the point! We are moving into protest songs now.
Frontline Frontgarden: Week 9. 4 June 2020. The frontline this week is the Black Lives Movement.
Frontline Frontgarden Week 9. 4 June 2020. This week we should have been playing for Beth's wedding, so we played the Wedding March here.
Frontline Frontgarden Week 8. 28 May 2020, just a solo, surprisingly nerve-wracking
Frontline Frontgarden: Week 7. 21 May 2002
Frontline Frontgarden. Week 6. 14 May 2020.
Frontline Frontgarden: Week 5. 7 May 2020 Just me and the robin again.
Frontline Frontgarden: Week 4. 30 April 2020. Victoria and Georgia. Only my fourth attempt at all this videoing and uploading to fb so had ipad and iphone recording us in case one went wrong. Think I had covered the mike for Brown Girl in the Ring, so don't be surprised at the drop in volume!
Frontline Frontgarden Week 3 23 April 2020. We did a mash-up of the songs that various different "interested" bodies were willing the British public to embrace as saccharine for the Frontline. They are all songs I like but I didn't feel we should be told what to play on the day. It was all just a bit too corporate for me, and not really from the heart.
It is Week 2 of the Frontline Frontgarden. Instead of clapping and banging pieces of metal, we are actually playing pieces of metal. This is our public thanks to the Frontline NHS for being there, for doing all they do, for taking all the risks.
