Wednesday 30 January 2002. Later that night we boarded the coach again to head to a Tyrolean Evening in a nearby large hostelry. The singing on the way there was making Jock howl in the driving seat...!
Yes, it's your actual Austrian hands, knees and bumps-a-daisy traditional evening with music, folk dancing, bell ringing and hammering in the silver mine!
Here all the little handbells are arranged on the table for the tune known as the Glockenplattler. It's usually the ladies of the troupe who play the bells interspersed with much hand slapping and knee slapping.
And these nights never pass without a certain amount of audience participation... Now admit it, yes, come on, you did expect this didn't you? I did - if there's any danger of being involved in a show it is always me... "Mug" written all over me!
There's only one way to deal with this and that is to enter the spirit of the thing with gusto and do your best to out-do the rest of the troupe!
In particular when it came to the yodelling yell, I filled my lungs and made sure my yell went on for longer than anybody else's - even the guy holding the mic! Then pulled off a few elaborate bows to get the audience well and truly on my side! I got a huge roar from the audience and as I made my way back to the table, one of the Americans on the table in front of ours stood to shake my hand! To quote a certain Mr Punch: "That's the way to do it!"
And there we go, the end of the holiday. It just remained for one of the lads in the folk troupe to get very worried as he climbed up onto our table to dance, because all the women were trying to squint up the legs of his rather short lederhosen... Tomorrow and the day after will be spent travelling north back to and across the Channel and then back to good old Blackpool and home.
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