IT'S A LONG WAY TO PACK UP YOUR TROUBLES

And another thing. Why is is that when British people get together for a singsong, they always end up warbling "It's A Long Way to Tipperary" and "Pack up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag".  It's nearly a hundred years since the First World War came to an end for goodness sake and we're still singing about smiling while we've got a lucifer to light our fag! They don't write 'em like that, any more and that's a fact. Our German and French volunteers were slightly bemused - but the experience was all part of deepening their understanding of this island race.

 A return visit by Monsieur Lacy Anderson, complete with beret and his digital accordion orchestra, a remarkable instrument which Lacy plays with amazing dexterity. Before he started, he passed round a sheet of paper asking for requests and ended up playing golden oldies ranging from the "Lambeth Walk" to the hits of Elvis Presley. Plus "You'll Never Walk Alone" - the anthem of Celtic football club combining sentimentality and religiosity to which Michael Beckett seemed to relate - and the Marseillaise for Christophe. Merci beaucoup Lacy. And thanks to Cambridge City Council for subsidising the event.

 "Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag, and Smile, Smile, Smile" is the full name of a World War I marching song, published in 1915 in London. It was written by George Henry Powell under the pseudonym of "George Asaf", and set to music by his brother Felix Powell.^[1] A play presented by the National Theatre recounts how these music hall stars rescued the song from their rejects pile and re-scored it to win a wartime competition for a marching song.^[2] It became very popular, boosting British morale despite the horrors of that war. It was one of a large number of music hall songs aimed at maintaining morale, recruiting for the forces, or defending Britain's war aims.