JERUSALEM.

Christmas Greetings From

Uncle Monty At Jerusalem.

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As a sinful Anglican, Protestant, and Christain, I have now

arrived at Religious Israel at this Christmastide to witness first

 hand the holy sites of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and Nazareth,

among others, and to be devoted to the spiritual and historic

presence of our Christ Child's magnificent and all-splendid

birth that humankind cannot deny no matter how hard some

of them try in this age of dark digital disrespect for

His Holy birth and all that He stood for.

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I am humbled to be standing for the first time inside Israel,

despite all of its seizure mentality and Palestinian strife

and provocative threats against a future Nuclear Iran.

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I am here as a Christian and Western pilgrim first and

 foremost, but my Anglican eyes and Protestant ears will

not and cannot dismiss or ignore what I see and hear inside

Israel that is armed to the teeth and living under a military

 and police state that is disconcerting to

 witness to say the least.

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Of course, while here inside Israel, I shall endeavour to

visit the most ancient and most traditional religious sites

of the birth of Our Lord Jesus Christ. From Jerusalem

to Bethlehem to Nazareth to the See of Galilee I shall

tread with great respect and no doubt much awe of

Christendom's memorials, monuments and edifices

 that mark here the glad origins of true Christianity.

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After Israel, I shall also be visiting Jordan's Amman

while staying very clear of post-Hosni Mubarak's

Egypt while in the Middle East for the next three weeks.

Lebanon's Beirut is also on my New Year's travel list.

On my flight back to London, I shall make a stop-

over at Rome for a couple of days if the winter

weather of Europe doesn't suddenly turn foul.

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Once I return to homebase, I shall continue my blog

stories - here at allaboutthebigissue - against The

 Rotten Big Issue and the vile Bird Brothers and

coupled with looking at the many issues and events

 impacting on the lives of the homeless inside

Broken Down Britain.

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In the meantime from Jerusalem on this Christmas Day,

and after being in Bethlehem for the rise of Christmas morn,

I wish you all a very Happy Christmas & A Blessed

 New Year, 2012, which will bring with it many important

anniversaries like the centenary of the sinking of the Titanic,

 the 200th Anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens, the

Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II's

English reign, and the somber 40th Anniversary of the

Massacre of Israeli Athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics

 that coincides with our own London Olympics.  I shall no

 doubt be hoping to write and comment on such events,

 here and there, during the year of 2012 on my Google

blogz after my heart operation has taken place!

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So In closing the year 2011, I again wish one

and all a Very Happy Christmas from Israel ...

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Best Wishes, Uncle Monty.

+Christmas Day At Jerusalem, 2011.

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Old Christmas Carols At The Brompton Oratory.

By Uncle Monty.

Photos By Gary Day

& Alex Albion.

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Just a day or so before heading off to Tel Aviv via

Rome, I accepted the welcome invitation for me to attend

the Traditional Catholic Carol Service at London's famed

Brompton Oratory. With over 2,500 persons present, it

was an extraordinary event by any religious standard of

which I was delighted to be a part off even though I'm

not Catholic but purely Old Anglican.

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The Brompton Oratory's Marvellous Boys' & Girls' Choir.

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Of the 4 or 5 Xmas events I attended over the space of

the past 7 days in London, undoubtedly the Carol Service at

the Brompton Oratory was the most traditional - thankfully.

Many of the old Christmas carols came forth with O Come,

O Come, Emmanuel; Once In Royal David's City (one of

my favourite carols along with The Holly & The Ivy

and I Wonder as I Wander  ); O Come, All Ye Faith-

ful, and Hark The Herald Angels Sing. Those carols of

old I so much love and they can basically keep all the

 rest of the jazzed-up Christmas honky-tonky tunes

and modernistic Xmas songs for they do so little for

me. I'm a traditionalist first and foremost over all the

 trashy Xmas stuff of today that leaves me mostly

 cold and decidedly unmoved.

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Solemn Benediction At The Close of the Carol

Service By the Religious Fathers & Brothers of

London's famed Brompton Oratory. It was a fitting

close to the Latin Rite Catholicism I found at The

 Oratory Under The Foundership of St. Philip Neri.

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Just A Stone's Throw from The Oratory, I saw this

delightful English Merry-Go-Round going round and round

and with it all lit up as winter dusk fell at Old London Town.

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London Underground Busker at South Kensington

Tube Station All Dolled Up In His Santa Suit!

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While My Friend & Fellow Photographer Gary Day Spotted

This Impressive Menorah At South Ken Tube Station As 

We Headed To The Brompton Oratory.  From Our Jewish

Friends it declared "Happy Chanukah" to one and all ...

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In Memory Therefo ...

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Feedback & Comments

allaboutthebigissue@gmx.co.uk

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Open Mic.

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Xmas Open Mic At CRISIS.

By Uncle Monty.

Photos By Alex Albion.

Part 2 of 2.

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For me, it was hard to engender the Spirit of Christmas

at the so-called Xmas Open Mic at where not a single

Christmas decoration was in sight save for some small

 mince pies for sale inside the CRISIS Skylight Cafe

at where the Open Mic was held just days before

Christmas Day. Nobody even wore anything Xmasy,

except one performer with his blue and white Santa

 hat and myself with my colourfal and noticeable

shiny green Xmas Tree hat.

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Chorally, I also found poor Christmas pickings at the Xmas

Open Mic at CRISIS that saw more performers than

visiting patrons at its venue that was held at its East

 London Commercial Road HQ. I was among just an

handful of those patrons who witnessed what was

more a corny and common Tin Pan Alley* Show

than anything to do with Christmastide. 

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* Meaning of Tin Pan Alley: The New York Herald referred

to it as "the sound made by many pianos all playing different

tunes being exactly like the banging of many tin pans in an

 alleyway." The term is used in a somewhat derogatory fashion.

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Worse still, from the word go, I realized I'd made a bad

mistake even going to such an Open Mic whether it

was Christmas or not at CRISIS. So I was there and

since I was there I decided to stay there and see

 the whole Xmas Open Mic from beginning to end that

 lasted close to three very long hours for me. It was

my first visit and will now probably be my last!

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There Was An All-Around Shabbiness and

Slothfulness - Much Like An Inertia - With The

 Performances of The Streetwise Opera Just Like 

It Was With Much of The Whole Xmas

Open Mic At CRISIS.

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Of course, there were exceptions that I found with

Ken Roberts (shown below) with his classic peform-

ance from "The Phantom of the Opera." Lord Andrew

Lloyd Webber would have been very proud of Ken and

rightly so!  Ken does all of his own makeup, too, along

 with his own special white mask that sets him apart from

the other less than grand performers at the Xmas Open

 Mic at the CRISIS Skyline Cafe.

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Two other performers impressed me. They were Anne

 Mary (shown with me at the above caption picture) and

her partner Peter Pereira, who brought the house down

 and they most certainly deserved that with their skillful

and delightful guitar playing.

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Ken Roberts.

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Guitars Galore At The Xmas Open Mic.

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Goregous CRISIS Staff Member!!

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This Guy Was All Guitar Playing And Good At It.

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He was the only one with something Xmasy. He is also

a member of The Choir With No Name - TCWNN -  

along with The Streetwise Opera. Both, of course,

are populated almost exclusively by homeless people.

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Obviously, many of the performers were non-Christian

and foreign ethnics as they bellowed out their various

 vocal offerings or their common musical gigs that showed

no sign of Christmas from beginning to end. Compared to

the sheer delight of the very Xmasy performance two

nights earlier at The Choir With No Name (TCWWN),

it was almost depressing at times for me to watch the

CRISIS so-called Xmas Open Mic Night at where even

with such loud applause I was at a loss to appreciate

the poor, mechanical, and at times, purely low level

of talent I saw.  It appeared, too, that the performers

were mostly performing for the other performers and

 not per se for the public patrons present like me.

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If I had to pick the best, it would have to be Ken

Roberts and Mary Anne and Peter Pereira at

 the Xmas Open Mic, although they neither did

anything very Xmasy at the CRISIS Skylight Cafe.

Nevertheless, Ken, Mary Anne and Peter were

the best of the more than 25 other homeless

performers. Being homeless is no excuse for

not trying to be the best in whatever one can do.

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Here's The Good Exception: Anne Mary Pereira.

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Of course, I had expected a very Xmasy night out

at CRISIS that did not transpire for me and so that

maybe why I was so chafed and peeved as I watched

various guyz and galz doing their rather non-Christmas

gigs. CRISIS is located in the heart of the Muslim-

dominated Tower Hamlets of London and that may

 also be one of the reasons why I saw no Christmas

 decorations. What a pity, if such is true!!

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And Sadly, This Is Home For Many Homeless This Christmas.

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I have now thus attended two homeless Xmas events in

the past week. Both are a far cry from what The Big Issue

fails to do for the homeless at Christmastide. It begs

Christmas donations from the gullible public to "help

the Big Issue vendors," but provides little or nothing for

them except a rather poor Vendors' Party that isn't worth

 the time or energy for most vendors to attend. If they do,

they're lucky to get a small bottle of spring water and an

even smaller bar of Divine Chocolate to which old Gordon

 Roddick, co-founder of The Big Issue, has a vested and

 business interest in. The vendors might also get a plate

of food cooked at Union Chapel when Paul Joseph

 and Bad Ass John Duffy did the cooking there. Both of

them have since quit The Big Issue like so many other

staffers have over the past few years under the gruff and

tyrannical and greedy management of the vile Bird Brothers.

Pigface John Bird retired this year and his scum brother

Peter Bird is probably next, if he's not already been

booted out for good from The Big Issue HQ at

London's Vauxhall. Perhaps they'll send him off to

Scotland again to help the new editor Paul McNamee?

Peter Bird was almost useless when he was last at

Glasgow, so I'm told. 

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At one time, vendors would get a nice wind-

breaker jacket and a new pair of Camper sneakers or

trainers at Christmas, but The Big issue seems to have

cutback even on such corporate handouts to vendors

to save their own big profits and fat bank accounts

for their own fat catz. "To hell with the vendors,"

they could easily say amd do.

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 Thingz have changed alot at Bird's once

flourishing pigsty that functioned for years at the

 expense of the homeless as always. With Christmas

here again, the vendors will be for the most part in

the usual situation of trying to make heads or tails on

 the streets. While, of course, the vile Bird Brothers

and their rich gang like Trudie Styler, James Cann

and Nigal Kershaw, always come out best!!

God damn the godless sods!!

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Upon leaving the Xmas Open Mic Night at CRISIS

Skylight Cafe, I saw a chilly, cold and wet late night as

 I got No. 40 bus back to homebase. While on the bus

a black bitch and a hostile middle-aged white guy got 

 into a verbal row that saw all the blacks on the bus

 gang up on the white guy who stuck out his tongue

at them and the nasty black bitch then made obscene

gesticulations and comments about white folkz. It

could have turned even more ugly had the white guy not

gotten off two stops later. The black bitch demanded

 the bus driver to stop and call the police so that she

could report him!! The driver just ignored her as she

then got off at the next stop with her screaming baby

 carried on her back like she was still living in far

away Zimbabwe or Zululand instead of at England's

capital city of London. The incident just closed a

rather all around depressing evening for me with no

 Christmas cheer at all as I arrived back at homebase

to start to scribble my blog notes on my Dell laptop

for this my last story of the year 2011 called

 "Xmas Open Mic At CRISIS."

Fraternally with the homeless, Uncle Monty

+It Came Upon A Midnight Clear, 2011.

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'So many homeless are working' - "we're paying tax

 and sleeping on the street'".  By Rosamund Urwin.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-24022821-so-many-homeless-are-working---were-paying-tax-and-sleeping-on-the-street.do

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Feedback & Comments

allaboutthebigissue@gmx.co.uk

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No "Dear Leader" Anymore.

By Uncle Monty.

http://thebiggerissueorg.blogspot.com/2011/12/kim-jong-un.html

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Friend Jillian w/Uncle Monty At Royal Corporation Xmas Lunch.

Above Xmas Photo By Gary Day.

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Tonight, Thursday, I have been invited to the Brompton
 Oratory Carol Service that I am looking forward to very
much as a confirmed Anglican attending what is the
 most outstanding traditional Catholic and high ecumenical
Christmas Service in London. I feel so delighted to have been
invited. And, the latest secular news media rubbish about
Benedict XVI's "iffy" health is refuted by the Catholic World
News Service (CWNS):  "Pope plans full liturgical schedule
 for Christmas season. That's not something a sick man can
do," stated CWNS.  Also see: Calendario delle
 Celebrazioni del Tempo di Natale at The Holy See
website.

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Now for a couple of images from last night's Traditional
Carol Service Held At London's Famed Brompton Oratory.

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The Brompton Oratory Christmas Choirs, 2011.

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London's Famed Brompton Oratory At Early Nightfall.

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The Vile Bird Brothers of The Big Issue. They're The
 Same This Xmas As They Were The Last ... And
Will No Doubt Be The Same Next Xmas, Too.

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{ To Enlarge any image, just click on it }
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Xmas Songs.

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Christmas Songs of the Homeless. By Uncle Monty.

TCWNN Photos By Alex Albion.

Caption Photo By Gary Day.

Part 1 of 2.

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It is true that for many of the homeless there is little or

no Christmas songs or yuletide joy for them. Yet, there

 are some homeless folkz who do rejoice at Christmastide

and that I saw such folkz just days ago at the big gig of

Christmas songs of the homeless. The Choir With No

Name (TCWNN) proved that Christmas isn't just

doom and gloom for those homeless with Christmas

songs and melodies in their hearts.

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Although two days later, I didn't see much of the Spirit

of Xmas when I also covered the "Xmas Open Mic at

 CRISIS" to see what the homeless had there for their

 Christmas songs. I left rather peeved. In part 2, I will

tell you what happened at The CRISIS Skylight Cafe.

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In the meantime, Christmas is what you make it (or

 don't make it) despite being pennyless and homeless

 and marginalized at our all too secularized and

commercialized Christmastide that is so oftentimes

coupled with utter antipathy for Christendom's

Birth of the Holy Child.

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At Union Chapel, though not a religious gathering,

some 850 folkz and 330 choir members came to

celebrate Christmas in their own good way and to

 hear the joyous Christmas songs of the homeless as

presented by The Choir With No Name (TCWNN),

under the vibrant and lively direction of its inimitable

choir director Marie Benton. She is the soul and

glue that makes TCWNN what it is ...

...

But this night, Marie plays abit of a second fiddle as a

black stout lady (shown below) opened the TCWNN

Xmas Show with her resounding voice and her great guitar

 playing as over a 1,000 people then looked on in their

sheer anticipation of what was to come next  from the

Xmasy atmosphere inside Union Chapel.  Everybody

just joyfully jingled along with Christmas songs reverb-

erating from on high, if not with outright chapel carols

coming from the mouths of the other 13 various choirs

also present to vocally help everything to go along!

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She Opened The Xmas Homeless Show.

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The Brum homeless & nameless lad (shown be-

low) did his momentary salute at the end of his onstage

 singing. I regreted not recording what he did, since it

 would have been a kind of iconic image of the spirit he so

 positively displayed.  I tried later to find him back stage

 to ask him to do what he did onstage for one of my

 cameras. But alas he had already headed back to

 Brum  before I could find him. Such a simple salute

 by him helped to sum it all up for me at the

Christmas Songs of the Homeless.

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He was among the many other TCWWN members

 who gave the homeless a very good name by their

personal presence and their outgoing talents that they

freely shared with those folkz more fortunate than

them at this English Christmastide.

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A Perfect Match For TCWNN!

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 Only the stone-hearted would have rejected them out

of hand as the happy stage become one and them -

almost inseparable they became as the night of the

 Christmas songs of the homeless rejoiced, clapped,

 danced, cheered and whistled to everybody's support

 and delight. It was almost intoxicating and exhilarating

 to me and I am sure it was for many others folkz at

Union Chapel - both for the homeless themselves and

 those who paid good money for the privilege of

spending an evening with them singing and rejoyicing.

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Only She Had A Black Shaggy Coat With A

Great Song In Her Heart of Empty Homelessness.

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TCWNN Choir Director Marie Benton Kneeling

 On Stage Before One of Her Homeless Singers.

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This Guy Gave No Hint He Was Homeless

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Smart & Talented

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He Not Only Has A Good Stage Persona,

But He's Also Remarkably Photogenic.

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Here she is once again at the closing moments

of the Christmas Songs of the Homeless with 

a showy bouquet from her audience admirers.

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Of the 13 other choirs present at the Christmas Songs

 of the Homeless by TCWNN at Union Chapel, the list 

included Singingworks, ESKA, The Goldsmith's Vocal

Ensemble (GVE), Sol Singers, Soul Sanctuary Gospel

Choir, The Key Changes Singers, Vocality City, and

The Norton Rose Choir with their "variety of repertoire

 from Mozart to Kaiser Chiefs," stated the program notes.

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"The Choir With A Name," That I Did Not Get!

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These guyz & galz (shown above) belonged to

 "A Choir With A Name," but I never got its name!

Yet they were a joy, soundwise and photographically,

 for me. They were mainly college kidz from what I

could see and a far cry from those TCWNN homeless

persons. Their commonality, however, was evident

by their God-given gift of singing that transcends

national borders, creed, race, political ideology,

social status, and/or economic ladder.

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Singing is a good future and not a bad dead end

 for many homeless. While others can kick a foot-

ball at the Homeless World Cup (HWC) to rightly 

enhance their self-worth and wellbeing, there are

 those who use their vocal cords to set the world

on fire!! And then, step out of homeless to a brave

New World just waiting for them.  Bravo to one and

all at The Choir With No Name. You're all true stars

 that shined so brightly at the Christmas Songs of the

Homeless. Bravo, to you all once again!!

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And it should be noted, they now have two choirs with one

based at London's King's Cross and the other at Birmingham

in The Midlands. Thus, we now have The Choir(s) With No

 Name(s) to happliy contend with and they performed together

 for the "very first time" at Union Chapel, so noted Marie

 Benton. So that deserves another Bravo, and, of course,

 a very Happy Xmas to each one and all of them ...

...

Have Yourself A Traditional Merry Xmas

& A Blessed New Year, Uncle Monty.

+O Root of Jesus, 2011.

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Feedback & Comments

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Inside CRISIS Skylight Cafe.

Xmas Open Mic At CRISIS.

Coming Next By Uncle Monty.

Part 2 of 2.

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My Best 11 Images of 2011.

By Alex Albion.

http://thebiggerissueorg.blogspot.com/2011/12/best-images.html

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The Bastard Bird Brothers of The Big Issue.

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