Seasons of Love Iona Style

Every Wednesday evening we have a ceilidh. It’s an evening of poems, stories, song and skits. It reminds me very much of campfire gatherings of my youth camp days. It is a lovely Gaelic tradition. It usually involves dancing but we have no space or time for that so it’s an hour of laughter and drama. Anyone and everyone is encouraged to present something. Here’s how I got on stage…

At the end of service for dinner there is always a lot to do. Once the guests are gone and the serious cleaning begins those of us in the kitchen and housekeeping turn up the tunes. It’s a dance party of our own as we work to finish our jobs. Great fun. The other night we had a run of show tunes. RENT came up and we started making up silly lyrics. Well the notion took hold. I wrote some lyrics the next day. One silliness lead to another and there were nine of us who ended up singing this parody song at the weekly ceilidh.

There is only one tiny hiccup, many (most?) of our guests had never heard of the musical RENT. Ooops. So this very American offering was about to fall on deaf ears. However it was sung with gusto and enough silliness to bring down the house even if you’ve never heard it before. I’ll share the words below.

And here is a linkie dink to the music we used. Give it a try; you can sing along too! Every word is FACT.

SEASONS OF LOVE Iona style

Five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred duck eggs.
Five hundred, twenty five thousand carrots so dear.
Five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred tea cups.
How do you measure, measure a year?

In onions, in mop heads.
In chickpeas, in bowls of porridge.
In laundry, in rhubarb, in duvets, in spice.
In five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred menus.
How do you measure a year’s worth of rice?

How about love?
How about love?
How about love?
Measure in love.

Seasons of love.
Seasons of love.

Five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred tea towels.
Five hundred, twenty five thousand meals to plan.
Five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred aprons.
How do you measure the life of a Iona Volunteer?

In dishes we’ve washed,
or in times that we’ve sighed?
In salad we’ve tossed,
or the way that we’ve fried?

It's time now, to sing out.

Though the rota never ends.
Let's celebrate, remember
a year with our volley friends.