Warming up our voices with mulled wine before Christmas Carols

Saturday 21st December

The Navigators group organises an annual carol sing around the marina to collect money for the nominated charity, a local children's home.

After a couple of rehersals over the previous weeks, we warmed up our vocal chords with an afternoon mulled wine in the sunshine, followed by one last rehersal. As the sun started setting we headed out to visit each pontoon and then to the bars and cafes around the marina. With a set list of 7 songs (Rudolph and Good King Wenceslas were my favourites) I think it sounded pretty good with guitar, clarinet, mandolin, keyboards and recorder to accompany the 20 singers.



It got a bit chilly after sunset under clear skies, but some alcoholic refreshments along the way warmed us a bit and then I was glad the last couple of stops were inside. Over €300 raised which will go towards providing vouchers for the children to buy themselves a gift. Either the donators liked us or were paying to make us stop ;-) Well I enjoyed it anyway!



I hadn't really been feeling very Christmassy up until this point. Even with the decorations and tree up inside I just couldn't get the vibe. Maybe it has been the warm and sunny weather making me all confused; up until now Christmas has always been a sparkly interlude amongst cold, grey and wet British weather so it being sunny has thrown my seasonal clock out of kilter (not that I'm complaining about the sun, it's been lovely). Another plus is that with no tv we've escaped the incessant commercialism that Christmas has become with adverts starting way back in November in the UK. The Portuguese keep it nicely low key, there are some decorations in town but none of the over the top house decorating going on. A nice touch is that the marina runs a boat decoration competition so quite a few boats have outdoor lights on. I do love a twinkly fairy light!


Feeling more Christmassy now!