“Well,” said Bill Thomas, “we’re going to open with ‘You Raise Me Up,’ then do ‘Men of Harlech,’ ‘Myfanwy,’ and ‘Cwm Rhondda,’ and finish on ‘Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau.’”
Uncle Alan frowned. “Whereas we were going to start with ‘Men of Harlech,’ then do ‘Myfanwy,’ then do ‘Cwm Rhondda,’ and finish on ‘You Raise Me Up,’ leading into ‘Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau.’”
“Are those,” I tried, “not the exact same songs?”
“Well yes,” conceded Uncle Alan, “but in different orders.”
I looked at Rhys for support, in case I was about to make a massive faux pas. “Can you not justchangethe order?”
“Suppose we did,” said Bill Thomas. “What then? I suppose you’d want us to both be on stage singing the same songs at the same time. With two different choirs. Nobody’s ever tried such a thing. What would it even sound like?”
“Won’t it sound like onebigchoir?” I suggested hopefully.
There was a long pause.
“You know,” Bill Thomas said eventually, “the bellendmighthave a point.”
“Think of it,” put in Rhys Jones Bowen, “as a sort of Super Group.”
Uncle Alan seemed to be rolling this idea around in his brain. “You mean, the Real Skenfrith Male Voice Choir and the OriginalSkenfrith Male Voice Choir together in concert?” He turned to Bill Thomas. “What do you think?”
“I think,” Bill Thomas said, a smile beginning to spread across his face, “that we’d take over the bloomin’ world.” Then he took a moment to reflect. “Well, take over northeast Monmouthshire at least. Which is a good start.”
“But what would wecallourselves?” asked Uncle Alan.
Rhys Jones Bowen nodded sagely. “Funny you should ask that. How about the Real Original Skenfrith Male Voice Choir?”
* * *
Having, with Rhys’s help, resolved the Great Male Voice Choir Feud, I had a precious thirty-five seconds to myself before Alex walkie-talkied me with the next crisis.
“Luc, Luc,” he babbled. “There’s a strange man hanging around the refreshment area. I’m pretty sure he’s homeless and he definitely has a knife.” He paused. “Over.”
My instinct was always to assume that the more certain Alex was about something, the less likely it was to be actually true. So I felt pretty confident that investigating this mysterious intruder wouldn’t get me stabbed.
And sure enough, when I got there, I found myself in a completely knife-free zone. I also seemed to be in a completely Alex-free zone, but then I realised that he was hiding behind a speaker like a cartoon spy.
“You see!” He pointed at the hunched, leather-jacketed figure sitting on a log just outside one of the refreshment tents. How he’d thought a homeless man could afford those clothes or that much hair product I wasn’t sure. Then again, Alex might have thoughthomelessmeanthad to let out one of his mansions.
“That,” I told Alex, “is the Earl of Spitalhamstead.”
Alex boggled. “But he looks like such an oi—”
I didn’t let him finish. “You okay, Saint?” I yelled out.
To my surprise, he didn’t yell anything back. He just sat there with his head down and his hands clasped one inside the other.
I approached him the way you might approach a normally aggressive dog that you’d found vomiting in the corner of your garden. “You okay?” I tried again.
“The guys are off eating jackfruit hot dogs,” he said. “You were right. They hate me.”
Yeah, they doseemed unnecessarily mean. “Hate’s a strong word—”
“Okay, but they really, really don’t like me.” An almost hopeful look crossed his face. “Hey, do you think there’s a song in that?”
“Already was one.”
He frowned a frown of utter defeat. “Fuck. Why does that always happen to me?”
