John, one of our club members lives in Canewdon and knows a number of the members of the Evergreen Club, which meets once a week in Canewdon Village Hall.

The Club is run for retired gentlefolk, and is, apparently, always looking for something new and 'interesting' for their members.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, John told some of the members about the club's demo at Kingswood Baptist Church (article), how well it went down, etc., and they thought they'd like to 'share the experience'.

John brought the idea back to the club, and I asked for volunteers to indicate on a form their interest and what date(s) they could make (the Evergreens meet on Wednesday afternoons).

We had a good response, and settled on Wednesday, 6^th March commencing at 2·45 and lasting for about an hour. Sorted!

Now for the dances and music - I took the playlist from the previous demo and modified it a bit, adding a couple of dances and changing the order. Everyone then got a copy well in advance - forewarned is forearmed. The order was :

As usual, to give a bit more information and make it, hopefully, more interesting, I waxed lyrical about line dancing, the actual dances we were performing and the music. It breaks the dances up a bit and hopefully gave a bit more VFM.

The bottom line was that the Evergreen Club members thoroughly enjoyed it - there were lots of smiles (some slightly bemused) and plenty of toes tapping in time to the music. They enjoyed it so much that they asked whether we could make a return visit a bit later in the year.

As usual, we performed in aid of 'our' charity Retinitis Pigmentosa (info). Margaret, a club member and fundraiser for the charity was, unfortunately, unable to attend, but we took some literature and I read out some information taken from our on-site RP (info) page. As it turned out, one of the Evergreen members sufferers from RP, so the event was especially appropriate.

At the end of the performance, we were given £30 'appearance money' to donate to RP - many thanks to the Evergreen Club, who were a smashing group of people, for this - every penny will go directly to the charity - no middlemen, no admin. Thanks also to all of the participating Tulsa Shuffle club members, namely John, Brenda, Jane, Yvonne, Vera, Sheila, Maureen, Beryl, Eileen & Judith who gave up their afternoon for this worthy cause. This made, including Wendy and myself, a grand total for the 'troupe' of 12.

Two days after the performance, Brenda, who is a Canewdon resident, phoned me to say that she has seen a number of the Evergreens around the village, and that they were very appreciative of the club's efforts at entertainment. We had such quotes as "I've never seen dancing like it ...", "Much better than the usual 'singing' we get" - we agreed to take the first comment the complimentary way. Also, the Evergreens were referencing dances by name and by music used - am I impressed or what?

We look forward to meeting the Evergreens again at our next appearance.

Evergreen Feedback

In the following edition of 'The Broomstick' - Canewdon's local news publication, there was an article covering our Evergreen 'entertainment. Only the relevant section is reproduced here :

Many thank to the chair and author Rosemarie Barker for her kind comments concerning our club's participation.

To paraphrase big Arnie Schwartzeneger - "We'll be back!!!!"