On the last day before Christmas, my true love sent to me: four inflatable Santas, three sets of tuned sleighbells, two great Sleigh Rides and a robot

I got a text last night from Dr Liz asking how the concert went, and my answer was that it was too good to do it justice in a text so I'd have to ring her! But she was about to go to sleep, so I said I'd blog about it ASAP.

(I'm currently temping at a company in Salford Quays. I'm covering reception, but the phone didn't ring at all today - very peaceful!)

All of this year's carol concerts have been good, but last night's was far and away the best. So I was delighted that that's the one my mum came to. She says that there were people next to her who'd come up from Devon specially - they didn't have relatives or friends performing, they just came because they knew it would be good! What excellent taste. And Bruce was there too - not seen him for ages!

Anyway, there were many things that happened at last night's concert that didn't happen at any of the others, and since I don't have currently anything to refer to, I might forget some of them. But I know you're all dying to hear what they did for "12 Drummers Drumming", so let's start there!

Our first clue was that there was an unexpected drum on the stage - I think it's called a conga drum but I could be wrong. Definitely Latin American, anyway. This drum hadn't appeared in any of the other carol concerts, and as far as we were aware there were no items on the programme with Latin American percussion involved - exciting! Anyway, it lay dormant until The Twelve Days of Christmas, and then, on the twelfth day of Christmas, we had a whole Latin American percussion break - all the section played, there were shakers and everything - and then Jim the clarinettist stood up and played Tico Tico. Fabulous!

(There was also a new turkey hat for our conductor in The Twelve Days of Christmas - one of several that were produced during the concert. Sadly Petroc never got one for himself, but he was excellent apart from that!)

Mozart's Sleigh Ride was as wonderful as ever as far as the sleighbells were concerned. Ric wore his antlers again, and they fell down again. Our conductor made us giggle again with his dreamy look while conducting the audience. But the new addition was that John the timp player did an impression of a robot in the bars when he wasn't playing. Not everyone could see this, but it was very amusing to those of us who could! It's hard to describe what he actually did - probably the easiest way is to say: you know when someone does a mime of being a robot? That's what he did!

Then, at the start of the second half, the horn section had us all crying with laughter. I remember a few years ago when one of them brought the house down by wearing an inflatable Santa suit - well, this year ALL FOUR OF THEM wore inflatable Santa suits, and they could hardly walk, so they had to help each other get onstage. I can't remember the last time I laughed so much! And of course the audience probably thought this had happened every night, but it hadn't, and we had no warning so we were as surprised as they were. I'm really cross I didn't have a camera with me though. If anyone magically managed to get any photos of the horns in costume, please send me one! I'll be forever grateful!

There were no other extreme costumes in the orchestra, although there was a lot more tinsel - and more Santa hats and antlers etc. - than on previous nights. However, the trumpets and trombones made up for their sartorial restraint by being very wonderful indeed in the Sleigh Ride encore. They stood up for the jazzy bit again, but this time they didn't play just the printed notes - they really jazzed it all up. And the percussion section joined in the fun by making the most of the fact that they had Latin American instruments available! And the horns, not to be upstaged, stood up in their Santa suits to play their traditional Rudolph excerpt. I'm sure Leroy Anderson would have loved it all!

What else? Ooh, I nearly forgot Santa. Not the inflatable horn Santas but the other one. When Petroc was introducing something or other, Santa came onstage - carrying not a sack, but a violin - and interrupted him . He (Santa) was unimpressed at the way he'd been portrayed and wanted to correct this. He also wanted to audition for the orchestra! He got out his violin to show what he could do, but quickly found that his beard got in the way when he played it the usual way - so he held it in front of him and played it like a cello. He gave us a quick burst of Hava Nagila, but although I thought this was very impressive, it didn't impress the leader of the orchestra enough for her to invite him to join the violin section. She decided he'd be OK with the violas (!)... but there were no empty seats. In fact, it turned out that there was only one empty seat in the whole orchestra - the timp chair. So Santa was sent over to sit behind the timps, and it was only then that I realised that Santa was in fact John the timp player (who'd been a robot earlier). A versatile guy!

Anyway, a great time was had by all (although I do rather wish the coughers had stayed at home - they got louder each day!) I need to sleep now. However, I do have a vague plan of doing a 12 Days of Christmas feature here, starting tomorrow - I haven't entirely decided what form it will take, but do watch this space!

P.S. I've just realised I've ended every paragraph with an exclamation mark. Sorry. But it was just an exclamation-mark-type concerts :-)

P.P.S. Almost forgot - the annual American military's Santa-tracking site is now live - do have a look if you've never seen it - plus, if you're losing track of the date, my favourite website will help....