Kettle Bridge Concertinas

Original photo: Sally George

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A large group of Kettle Bridge Concertinas (Sandy, Pat, John, MF-D, Tricia, Fiona, Carol, Sue, Trina and Sally) went to the West Country Concertina Players residential weekend at Kilve in October 2010.

This was a special occasion for Kettle Bridge Concertinas for several reasons. A large group of us made the pilgrimage to the West Country and for several it was their first experience of a Kilve weekend. Our group had enjoyed a successful year (not least by being awarded a £5000 grant to promote the concertina in our locality) and attending Kilve together seemed an appropriate celebration when we all wore the new club kit of turquoise polo shirts. In addition, we were also helping one of our group (Tricia) to celebrate a significant birthday the month before and the Kilve weekend was a surprise present for her – our thanks to Esther for helping with the subterfuge!! All our hopes and expectations were more than fulfilled during the October weekend.

There were lots of highlights for us. We descended en masse on the intermediate band – and apologise to Claire that we omitted to provide some dark glasses as she confronted the bright turquoise of our group’s polo shirts so early in the morning. Playing in the band was great and the experience stretched us all as we found ourselves able to do things we had not done before – so much so that even the most experienced of us had “butterflies” before we performed at the Sunday afternoon concert. Thanks to Claire’s expertise we all felt we had achieved. We loved the music we played and have come home with some of the tunes going round and round in our heads!

Our only regret is that we could not get to all of the workshops but some turquoise shirts could be seen at some of them, all of which were informative and helpful. The bar sessions were fun – again, for several of us playing in this kind of session for the first time. We learnt a lot during the weekend.

The brilliant weekend finished with a fun evening at the local pub, The Rolle Arms. Kettle Bridge Concertinas joined in the music playing as well as leading some of the dancing. We all returned home as “bigger” people – and not just in terms of all the good grub we had consumed!