It was in the nineteen eighties
That I speak of with such joy,
When the front row was not only girls,
But also the odd boy.
The ladies, bless’em, S’s and A’s,
Fronting the T’s and B’s,
Who, eight in all, yes eight no less,
Completed a sight to please.
’Tis St George’s choir of which I speak,
Who in cassocks of carmine hue,
And surplice or with collar white,
Filed quietly to their pew.
There was Winifred, Barbara, Ruth and June,
Margaret, Jane and Sue,
Granville, Kelly, Mike and Bill,
And Gerry, to name but a few.
With psalter and hymnal, A and M,
From out the choir stalls,
Jubilate and Te Deum
Went echoing round the walls.
Reverend Harry Gibson was vicar then,
Choirmaster was Geoffrey Jones,
And both, though now to Glory gone,
Of the church were cornerstones.
With sermon said and Communion given,
And we’d socialized in the Hall,
There was just one duty lay ahead,
Before we faced nightfall.
With Nunc dimittis at Evensong,
At the going down of the sun,
Our Sunday worship was thus fulfilled,
By the faithful thirty-one.
Photograph of the Choir taken from around the time
that the poem is written.
Gerry Marfleet
