Last night I dreamt of the valleys

Late Night Music:

I’m still not sure it wasn’t a lucid dream.... A little awash with HPA and stepping out into the silence of a Welsh town. Not quiet like the hush in New Cross as I write, where there’s still the rattle of trains and the wail of sirens but the silence of no cars, no distant shouts, not even a robin defending its patch, the sort of silence that makes you tap your ears to check they are still working.

Then I wander along the empty high street and still nothing breaks the spell, it’s almost unnerving, won’t someone make some noise. Nearing my bed I’m glad to turn into my street and then it happens, a wisp of sound the aural equivalent of brushing past a lavender bush or a seeing a fleeting face in a crowd. A few more steps and it gets stronger until I can make out the tune, of all things “Hymns and arias”. As I get up close I find an entire male voice choir packed tightly into the low slung bar of my B&B. Packed as tightly as their matching blazers, faces shiny and flushed as they sing. Inside the hallway, staff and guests peer round the door listening to the men sing.

Joining them I am soon ushered into the bar to have a drink and then spend the following 30-40 minutes surrounded in the most wonderful of sound. Not a proper concert (that had been earlier across town) but a social post gig sing.

After each song finishes the talking and joking springs up, rounds are ordered and toilets found, then unbidden someone will start another verse or blow a tuning harmonica to set the key and it starts again, songs old and new, religious and profane.

The biggest joy is just standing in this tiny low space and being enveloped by the sound, a rare thing even for a live music fan. And then their coach arrives and slowly pints are sunk, bladders emptied, goodbyes said, and one last cheeky round bought and then they are gone singing their “so longs” as they leave. The beaming faces of the young bar staff testament to the power of the music.
It is the sort of event tourist boards would love to promote but like most of the perfect moments in life it came up out of the silence unsort, unplanned, unexpected and doubly welcome for being so.