And so Christmas has arrived.

The Ladies of Terreros Group was initially formed by 3 of the current ladies who started it off as a slimming club. As others joined the emphasis moved away from the slimming and more to being a social and supportive group. The initial ladies Ann, Carol & Sandra found it a good way to share information about living here and dealing with the problems that occured. As more ladies joined them, this became a huge source of support and knowledge and there are now regularly more than 20 ladies at the weekly meetings.

One of Ann's ideas was to introduce Christmas Carol's to the area in a way of keeping a little of her own english traditions to help her through a Christmas away from her family. Again, over the years this has grown into the fantastic evening that we had on Wednesday night.

It was held at a local bar, The Montesol, who were totally caught on the hop by the numbers that turned up. So our first job was to bring more tables and chairs outside. All the ladies had brought food to hand round in the interval, (yes, there would be enough songs to need an interval) there was everything from sausage rolls and sandwiches to mince pies and cakes. There were also lots of raffle prizes, some donated by the ladies and others by local businesses who were very generous in supporting us.




To get the evening under way Amelia, one of our Spanish ladies introduced a lady who had come down from Pulpi council. Pulpi is where our local town hall is and all the official bits are done for Terreros.


As the crowd were settling it was time for the ladies to assemble at the front, Santa hats in place. As is the tradition is Spain, many of us were wearing red. I have to say for poor Sandra trying to get us all settled, it would have been easier to sort a group of 5 year olds! But eventually we were all gathered, song sheets in hand.

We had rehearsed a few times but suddenly looking out at a sea of expectant faces it really felt like a couple more practice sessions would have been useful, there must have been over a hundred people looking back at us.


But, song sheets at the ready Sandra counted us in for the first carol, Once in Royal David's City.

And it sounded pretty good! In an effort to improve the atmosphere the bar owner dimmed the lights so we were singing against a back cloth of fairy lights, very pretty, just one problem

WE COULDN'T READ THE WORDS!

So, lights back on we continued through the carol's. A few of us that go to Amelia for Spanish lessons had learnt a traditional Spanish carol - Villancico. I never quite understood the relevance of the carol as it's about fishes drinking in the river but it has a really catchy tune. Click here for a link to Youtube and a really catchy version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84wS1mS0N60 It would be nice to think ours sounded like this but all the spanish in the crowd joined in and seemed to really enjoy it.

During the interval the ladies passed around all the food and sold raffle tickets and shook collection buckets amongst the crowd, all the monies raised would be donated to local charities in Pulpi.

It wasn't long before we were back at the front singing the second list of songs, I think we must have done over 20 carols in total, some of which I haven't sung since I left primary school.

We had a surprise visitor at the end when Santa dropped in for a quick visit, although I think Santa was really too busy making all the toys and sent his friend Superman as a stand in!

It was an absolutely brilliant evening and really brought Christmas to Terreros and on the night, we raised over €300 for local charities which is a great result.

And the last word goes to Santa (who we managed to snap having a quick beer)

Ho Ho Ho MERRY CHRISTMAS