We had a very busy Christmas, as usual, and our first concert was at All Saints, Oystermouth, in aid of ‘Maggies’, a cancer charity. The church was full and the choir was directed by Gareth Widlake, who is one of our baritones. Although he has only been in the choir for a year, Gareth was formerly headmaster at Bishopston Primary School and, as he says, he is used to dealing with children, and this is no different!! The choir sung brilliantly and we were also fortunate to have Steve playing his keyboard accompaniments to various items as well. The soloist was Anwen Pike. We have been informed that £2500 was raised for the charity and, again, our services were completely free.

Our next concerts were the same as last year, also, with the first being at the Scout Hall, Brynmill. This is organised by our Ladies Committee and a great buffet was provided by them. Their Chairperson, Linda, gave presentations to the musical team and also a cheque for £2000.00 for our forthcoming trip to Barbados, which was absolutely fantastic and very gratefully received. The choir is going from strength to strength; when other choirs are dwindling in numbers, and we staged our biggest ever choir with 61 singers on stage. We had 8 new members during the year and it is all to do with the work of the choristers encouraging people to join. The evening also raised over £500 for Diabetes UK, which is the charity chosen by Nick, in memory of Debbie.

On Thursday 13th, we sang at the Vivian Hall, Blackpill, and again the hall was full and a great atmosphere created. However, it is getting a bit of a squeeze in the hall for the choir with our growing numbers! The highlight for the audience, as ever, was the communal singing of ‘The 12 Days of Christmas’ and we also sang ‘One More Mile To Go’, by Chris DeBurgh, again this year among our Christmas items.

We sang at the Christmas Community Concert at St Thomas church on December 18th. This is definitely the highlight of our Christmas programme with the old church absolutely packed. There was a tremendous atmosphere with choirs from Danygraig Primary School, St Thomas Community Primary School, and Cefn Hengoed Community School all taking part. All the choirs sang a number of Christmas items and we finished the concert with ‘Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree’ which brought the audience to its feet. All the choirs then joined to sing ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’. This was the last event in the church, as it is, because work is starting on making the church into two floors with a community hall on the ground floor and a church upstairs. We wish the vicar, Steve Bunting, and everyone much success with this project.

Our last concert was held at the Pier Cafe on Thursday 20th. This is the 3rd year we have sung at this event and, again, it was a great success, although ticket numbers are now being monitored carefully. However, there was still a lovely atmosphere in the Cafe and evening was introduced by Siany Martin, from ‘The Wave’ radio station.

Once again we had a busy Christmas and all the effort to learn a good number of Christmas items was well worth it. We also had over 50 singers at every event, which was a terrific achievement.