Eating in the vineyard

When, walking past the canteen this morning, I saw the canteen manager moving bails of straw from his car into the back door I was understandably confused. Do they secretly feed us straw? Are they keeping some kind of animal in there? Oh I had all sorts of theories. I didn't hit on the real reason though. It all became clear however when we went in for lunch. The whole place was decorated like a farmyard/vineyard/countryside random mix. There were straw bails, model geese and rabbits, and humongous fake grapes scattered all over the place. The other rather bizarre feature was recordings of bird song playing! It was quite fun if a little bizarre. Also they had a performance by the 'Philips choir'. No I had heard the choir before when they sang on the day of the music festival. I'm sorry to say IU heard nothing new- literally. Nathalie used to be in it but for some reason or other didn't get on with it and left. She was telling how they actually just do the same songs over and over all the time. We had 'The lion sleep tonight' complete with the "Woooohooohoo ummmbammbammbaway" and a rendition of Amazing grace in french. It was possibly because Nathalie was complaining about them and I was looking for faults, but I didn't like them much. Don't get me wrong they could all sing, but the parts chosen made each song sound samey and also I don't think a canteen is a good place for a choir. Also in amazing grace they had so many parts that you lost the tune. (Now that one I was of course comparing to my own dear choirs performance). I did get to tell the guys that it was John Newton who wrote it. I nearly went off into Newton's life history (which incedently I learnt from Psalty the singing songbook) but decided they probably wouldn't be that interested. But anyway it made lunch that bit more interesting