Autumn/Winter 2018

After a brief break over the Summer Holidays we were back into some previously performed songs to remind ourselves we do know what we are doing really 😊. Our AGM was much later than usual in October and that gave us all time to settle back into the choir and avoid too many of us being on our summer hols. We presented the cheque to the outgoing charity of the year, which was Shepshed Community Swimming Pool, We managed to raise a whopping £3400!!!! The biggest single cheque we’ve written so far, staggering. The money, we heard, will go towards back boards for use in case of an injury in the pool. As well as the outgoing charity we also voted on the night for the 2018/19 charity, we chose Admiral Nurses, who are specialist dementia nurses who give expert practical, clinical and emotional support to families with dementia. We look forward to raising money for them.

In October we had a special birthday surprise for one of our members, who celebrated a special birthday, that night we sang all of her favourite songs.

In early December, to start the Christmas festivities, we entered the Lions Christmas Tree Festival and as always, our tree looked stunning; helping to raise the awareness of Serenade with local folks and raising money for charity at the same time. Well done to everyone who put their time and effort into the decorating.

We embarked on our most challenging Nursing home tour ever, taking in all five of Shepshed’s nursing homes! We got a (very) warm welcome from them all and enjoyed trekking from one to another, but we were hoarse by the end of it.

The big Christmas Concert this year was at our Monday base, Iveshead school; and was titled “Serenade’s Winter’s Tale”. We had a mixture of readings and full choir pieces, along with solos and small groups. As always, a lot of hard work went into the night and we had a great night. This is our first Christmas concert for quite a while where we weren’t supporting (or being supported) by another group, so we had to learn lots of material to fill the whole evening. Many bought tickets from our raffle and all the drinks and mince pies all help to accumulate that money for our charity.

Not ones to rest on our laurel we battled colds and flu to go to Carillon Court; shaking our buckets and raising the roof, to get Christmas shoppers into the Christmas spirit. We raised a healthy £123.49 in the process. Well done lasses. Time for some Baileys!! Happy Christmas.