Karaoke at The Old Crown

What an excellent way to spend the night of the last day of term.

I met up with my buddies from PGCE for a couple of ales (why can't I write "ales" without thinking about Richard E. Grant? "Ale" sounds so much better than "bitter" . . .) which was excellent. There wasn't too much depressing teaching chat, and I surprisingly wasn't as tired as I'd expected myself to be.

The Old Crown is immense. It's a favourite haunt of Pete and Tom because of the excellent atmosphere and the fact that the locals were characters worthy of stories: Stan (I think) who talked his way through his songs; a fifty-something woman clad in animal print who sang as if she had a life of lost love; an older woman with a soul-diva voice - truly great.

Pete was without doubt the best performer of the night, really getting into Dancing in the Dark and Living On A Prayer, and my other companions did sterling Oasis covers.

But the rotters put my name down while I was at the bar and suddenly "Jess" was announced. Being a good sport, I got up and did Tainted Love, with backing vocals by Tom and Paul. They were very nice about my performance afterwards, but it was a pretty surreal experience. I felt like I had no control over my voice, and I was hitting bum notes all over the place. Plus, it was pretty low for me, so I sounded like a boy.

For my public singing debut though, it wasn't too bad. Next time though, I'll be sure to find something in my range.