This weeks' "Beam me up Scottie" moment.

Ely Cathedral was putting on a festival of American music and I was singing in one of the choirs. There was also some organ music including Charles Ives' Variations On America - 'My Country Tis of Thee' which of course we all know as God Save The Queen.

Now, if you're not familiar with this piece it gets of to a splendidly dramatic start and then settles down to the version of our national anthem we're all familiar with. Then.....Oh dear. At 2:15 I felt that mounting panic when you know you're hearing something that has not only tickled your funny bone, you just know you are in danger of losing it completely. This was not helped by one of the altos behind me whispering, 'Do you think the Queen's heard this?

If you can stay with it till the end you'll understand why my friend sitting next to me was digging her fingers into my arm and hissing, 'Get a Grip!'

I seem to have been the only one of us that was affected in this way which was a blessing because we then had to sing the Chichester Psalms

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-v5l7CRFW4

PS. There is some stunning photography in this YouTube version.

Manic laughter and the WI? I can see why you were met with disapproval

When I was in my teens I was actually thrown out of a cinema with three friends

We were watching Hitchcocks film The Birds. It was newly released. One of the boys told us about going to see a Horror Film with some mates and just as the vampire was striking his fans into the victims neck his mate stuck an ice lolly down his friends back who was sitting in front of him. His friend went mad.

We were falling about with laughter and couldn't stop until one of the cinema staff came up and asked us to leave.

These all made me laugh out loud. I found the sauna incident especially funny - just the excruciatingly daft sort of thing I would do.

I think I may have posted this one before:

About thirty years ago, my husband and I and the children spent two weeks travelling round Wales, towing our folding caravan. One hot day, after quite a long journey, we arrived late in the afternoon at a campsite. I was tired, thirsty and hungry and wanted to go to the loo. My husband pointed out the toilet block to me and I walked over to it. I walked through the block, pushing open each door, trying in vain to find one cubicle which wasn't in a disgusting state. Growing steadily more appalled, I flung open one door, to be met with a man seated on the toilet reading a newspaper. He looked up from his paper, quite unabashed, and cheerily said "Good afternoon"! I'd mistakenly gone into the men's side of the toilet block.

Ah.. Well, ok, but it's a longish story.

I really meant to not go to WI this year.

The guilt I felt at not going to my friend and her OH's lecture on 'the politics behind the struggle in the holy lands', with photos from their holiday, got the better of me so off I trundled to WI. He is my GP, my age, she slightly younger and they were quite nervous. So I got there and sat next to her right at the front - not my seat of choice.

The meetings are now held in a larger room, the main hall of our village. It really did look and feel EXACTLY like the meetings in Calendar Girls. You feel as if you are at school. We had all the minutes first. Our Chair had been going to do the announcements later, but GP was struggling with the projector from his photos on the laptop, so we swung straight from 15 minutes of mumbling the minutes from one member whose whole life revolves around the WI, into 'what's on around the county' - stuff we never go to, on the whole, and is in the flaming magazines anyway!

So the (newer) natives are getting restless, and Chair starts to raise her voice a Little. We in the front seats are still being very good, even though she seems to look at us all the time and make us feel guilty for not wanting to partake of all these 'exciting' events. We soon find out why...

Then comes her final item - an invitation to go to Church!!! A service especially for WIs!!! St. Mary's in Bury!!! And wave our Banners!!!

But - Oh Dear! We don't have a banner in B*****! So no-one to go to church on our behalf, to wave it on our behalf!!!

Friend and I give each other 'thank Christ for that' looks (she is catholic anyway) and then comes the crunch...

'It has been brought to my attention that a new crafting club has been started in our village, by some of our members here tonight. Perhaps they would like to make us a new banner?'

I did my very best horrified face, friend turned to me (it's at her house) and saw my face and instantly went into manic laughter, which set me off, and Chair threatened to throw us both out, then hastily realised that her lecture would be missing, GP annoyed, and luckily at that moment friend's GPOH hastily interrupted and said he was ready to start now! :D

So all further mention of banner dropped for now, but we are in disgrace and our cards marked... Friend and I now thinking of a knitted banner of dancing fairy cakes and a very small 'b*** wi' in the bottom right hand corner.

They've been going for 59 years in the village - why only now want a banner? But it was very funny. And also showed Chair in her true colours!

Yes do tell Janerowena. As a member of the Towns' Womens' Guild I can't help wondering what you are your friend were up to at the WI.

Janerowena Come on! You have to tell us why you were nearly thrown out of the WI.

I would go anywhere with you, Janerowena. You have made my day; still laughing.

Riverwalk I did marry the boyfriend and my impressions of his 'family' were quite correct they were all bonkers but we stayed married for 20 yrs and had 3 wonderful children. I never played Bingo again .. apart from at home with the grandchildren..

Far too many, from the time when I was 14 and jumped onto a good (boy) friend's back in the street and it turned out not to be him, to when I was much older at a Club Med poolside, emerged from the pool and my bikini bottoms fell down.

Or when I had a wardrobe malfunction on my first day at work in a new office, raced to the loos to do my bra back up, had to remove my jumper to do so and as I did, a cubicle door opened to reveal me with my jumper stuck over my head and no bra. All I could see were men's shoes... I never did get to see the man's face, but the CEO was very nice to me at the xmas party!

From going for the first time to a disco where the ultra violet lights picked out my white underwear under my thin cotton dress so that I looked undressed, to discovering my BF and a neighbour having sex in my bath at a dinner party.

So many I could probably write a book.

And last night my friend and I nearly got thrown out of WI!

So don't go anywhere with me, would be my advice.

A friend and I went for out first sauna session, got changed went through a door and sat on a bench with our towels wrapped discretely around us. Another lady came in and gave us a peculiar look and my friend said "is this as hot as it gets?" "In here, yes," said the lady. "The sauna is through there!" We crept in very sheepishly and put up with the sniggering!

Tanith

Did you go on to marry into said family?

Falcon that reminds me of when DS2 was around 4 - as we were leaving W H Smiths he said in a very loud voice

Mummy, have you paid for that?

I was in Boots with GD1 (then 21). As one can only buy two packs of Paracetamol at a time, I gave her the money to buy two more for me. As we left the store, she announced, loud and clear, 'That's the last time I buy drugs for you, Granny.'

Many moons ago I went out for the first time with my then very new boyfriends family to their local where they played bingo, I never having been introduced to the delights of bingo before I hadn't a clue what I was doing... after a while my boyfriends loud father yelled HOUSE grabbed my card and began waving it frantically in the air at the caller.... well it turned out I'd marked all the wrong lines or some such and he sat down very embarrassed and threw the card back across the table saying , someone teach her how to play...

Grabbing the arm of not my DH a complete male stranger to cross the road, also walked down the high street with someone's wig hooked on to my brolly ...quickly detached it and left it on a shop window ledge. I didn't hang around to see if its owner turned up!

I was shopping in town with my daughter when she was just a teenager and decided to buy a large bag of bird food from a market stall. He offered to put it in a plastic carrier, but my daughter gave me a lecture on the environmental aspects of plastic bags so I decided to just carry it. We were halfway round W.H Smiths before someone tapped me on the shoulder and said "I think your bag is broken!" I looked down and there was a trail of bird seed right across the store. Presumably we had left some on the High Street as well! The staff were very good about it and provided me with another bag, but my daughter, in the way that teenagers often are with their parents, was so embarrassed she immediately adopted her "she's not with me" posture and headed for the door!

jo1book

Reminds me of the time when I was in my small local shop and my three year old said "shall we steal something mummy."

As an honest citizen who has never stolen anything I was so shocked.

Despite my protestations the shopkeeper, from that day on, always stayed firmly behind the counter when I came in.

I love that, falconbird, reminds me of a tale my mother told.
She had me in arms, walking through a store ,when she noticed I had picked up a handbag from a counter and was dangling it down her back! I've always liked nice things.

When I was about 17 I was walking through M & S on a rainy day carrying an unfurled brolly.

Just before I reached the doors I looked down - and a pair of white trousers, the sort with the strap that went around the foot, had attached themselves to one of the spokes. I had dragged the trousers through the entire length of Marks and they were filthy because of the damp floors.

I pulled the trousers off the umbrella and ran for it.

I was once involved with a charity rebuilding a theatre. We had a London solicitor working for us. He was a bit eccentric with a beaky nose and frizzy hair. When we had a grand reopening concert he appeared in a dress and full make up! Each to their own, but it was a bit of a shock at the time.

I went to anti-natal classes with a girl who I met several weeks later and asked her long she still had to go and she said frostily "I had him a month ago".Retreat with red face.

I was once sat chatting with a couple over the breakfast table at a Youth Hostel:

"Where are you from?" I said,
"Lockerbie"

I just froze in silence, I didn't know what to say.......

Similar thing happened to be when I was 12 - local Sunday Schools got together to do a big Christmas show....we all sort of met up already in costume. I was chatted to by a very pretty ballerina - she was very disappointed and shrieked...'your not a boy' when I removed my shepherd boy headdress. She quite flounced off!