On moving back to Yorkshire, I again took a share of organ duties at the Cragg. One of the first special events was to play for Pauline and David’s wedding (Easter 1969) – in between acting as a human clothes hanger, while Katie steamed Pauline’s wedding dress (which she had made). There were several other weddings, but I wasn’t allowed to play for the important one in November 1969, so our friend Neil Hardisty (grandson of Mrs Hardisty the choir mistress) did the honours.
We bought a 2nd hand piano from an Auction in Guiseley; as soon as we got into the auction rooms, Katie saw a friend over the crowd and waved to him – and was told off by the auctioneer! The piano was very heavy, but we got it into our lounge.
I fell in with the Guiseley Amateurs, where Mr and Mrs Jack Ingleson were involved (their daughter Janet was a school friend of Rosalie’s, and had married Arthur Winfield, a friend of mine). I shared the playing, and did some arrangements and conducting for them; I remember we did a “music hall”, re-using some material from Romsey days. I also did a lot of arranging for this – stringing music together, with linkages, to form medleys, using photocopied music and sellotape and manuscript paper to put it all together. At Guiseley we also had a noted President in Barney Colehan, who was a BBC TV Producer, famous for “It’s a Knockout” and “The Good Old Days”; he was very helpful in arranging the loan of scenery backcloths. His daughter Eileen was part of the society; we had rehearsals at our bungalow, and served coffee, and Eileen was always first to volunteer to help wash up afterwards; after a while we asked why she was so keen, and she said she was glad to do it, because she wasn’t allowed to wash up at home – on being asked why, she said it was because she was always breaking everything; now she told us! But she never broke any of our things.
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