Joining the Ukelele Ladies

We call ourselves UKELELE LADIES (and sometimes a bloke)

My good friend and neighbour Florrie and I volunteer for the Neighbourhood House in our town with its many activities and support of community groups.  I retired after 14 years as co-ordinator there and I’ve told them I’m happy to do ‘just the fun stuff’.

I haven’t managed to talk Florrie into it yet, but one of the things I do is lead a Ukulele group, with a handful of enthusiastic triers, most of whom are also in our acapella singing group, Colours of Sound.

Ukes can often be the butt of jokes from ‘real musicians’ but to us, they’re great little instruments.  Often in bright colours, and especially cheery with singalong standards from the sixties and before .  We reckon it’s good to sing loud and play soft, and sshh,  musically, I’m only a few jumps ahead of them.  Time and again, people have come along ‘just to listen’ and protest that they   ‘could never play an instrument!’   We like to keep it informal and typically we get three or four attending out of seven on the list.  Sometimes we get drop-ins  who come, learn a few chords, borrow our spare uke and go off to learn at home, giving the uke back when they buy their own.

One day, some friends came in during our Uke group session to drop off a long electric blue wig with a fringe that I wanted to borrow (as you do).  We all tried it on of course and I took a photo of the wig on our only male uke player.
He showed it to a workmate, who sent it to her work email address and put it in the work newsletter. This was way out of character for this fella, who works as fire spotter up in a tower.

We’ve been meeting every Thursday for about five years now and regularly present singalong afternoons for Older Day Care or at the community events around town.

Another time group member Pat, rang right on starting time.  Apologising, she said she had to send her hubby off in the ambulance; she was feeling low and didn’t feel like driving the 14 kms into town.
While we were on the phone, another two members arrived ready to play. So what did we do?

We put the ukes in the boot & piled in my little bitty bomb car and took the session to her! We spent a fantastic time on her verandah with the birds tweeting along with us. We also had a cool lemonade, a guided tour around the garden, a good chat and lots of laughs.   As Florrie so often repeats  – with any group you belong to, there’s the main thing that you attend for, and there’s all the other unplanned stuff that you get pleasure from.

I loved the freedom to make that spontaneous decision to go ‘on the road’ and my only regret is that we didn’t have a camera.

Does anyone else here play in a ukelele or acapella group?