One context where I get the chance to sing (but usually don’t) is when attending sporting events. I made an exception at the (officially) third day of the Test Match between England and South Africa at the Oval.
We were sitting in the Bedser Stand, and before play the England team plus South African opening pair walked down the stairway a few yards away in silence instead of to the usual cheers, applause, trumpeter and so on. After a minute’s silence a singer, Laura Wright, appeared for what is usually a formality at internationals, the singing of the national anthems. (She obviously has a line in this, as we spotted her performing the same duty on Match of the Day a week later.) The crowd listened politely to South Africa’s polyglot anthem, but when she moved on to God Save the King – as our anthem had officially become with the proclamation of the new King an hour earlier – thousands upon thousands of us around the ground sang along. Possibly the only time the pre-match anthem was so fraught with significance at a Test might have been when South Africa returned after apartheid.