Some folks like radishes, and some curly kale...

So this weekend saw the 2010 Icknield Way Ale, where approaching 100 morris men (yup, an all boys event, this one) from all over the country gathered to dance, sing, eat and maybe have a beer or two. Four casks of ale from the ever reliable West Berkshire Brewery dealt with the drinks element, three vast vats of stew (plus spuds, coleslaw, pickles, cheese, etc.) provided more solid sustenance, and we managed to look after the rest between us.

A good night appears to have been had by all, though one day I might remember that it is a good idea to get more than an hour and a half of sleep after a lot of drinking and dancing. Oh well, nearly recovered now.

Catching Up: The Kennett Ale

Life has actually been pretty busy lately and I figure I have some catching up to do. So, taking events in no particular order, let's get started.

This weekend was the Kennett Morris Ale, and my second year of attendance. I rolled in a bit on the late side (well, just as things were getting started rather than in the planned good time) due to getting lost in Bracknell, my planned co-pilot having had a better offer in the form of a paid trip to the USA.

We were a bit limited for our show dances as we only had six of our side in attendance, but borrowing a musician for one set and a dancer (who is also a part-time Icknield Way man) we got through pretty well -- and I'm pleased with this picture showing Graham and I getting some fairly decent air on a Bampton dance.

Beer was drunk, chilli was eaten, dances were dances, and songs were sung. Much fun.

In the morning I gave a new friend a lift to the station, taking a rather circuitous route given that neither of us had any idea where the station was. It turned up eventually and I then managed to make my way home for a bit of a lie down.

Getting Jiggy

This weekend was pretty full on. I went with a couple of the other Icknield Way men to Nottinghamshire to take part in the Morris Ring's annual jigs instructional weekend. Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera, so no pictures this time.

For the uninitiated, a jig in the context of morris is a dance typically performed by one or two dancers, usually with only one of them dancing at a time (there are exceptions to all of that) where the emphasis is on individual skill, as opposed to set dances (usually 6 or more dancers) where it's all about the presentation of the group as a whole.

The weekend featured seven Cotswold morris traditions (a tradition is just a group of dances which were collected from one place, and which all have a number of stylistic features in common), with between 45 minutes and twice that dedicated to study of the jigs associated with each of them. That's quite a lot of dancing.

So the weekend went something like this...

Friday... Drove up with the lads, getting to the hall at about 8pm, being presented with dinner, and then getting stuck straight in to an hour of Ascot Under Wychwood, a tradition that was completely new to me. That done, it was off to take up residence at the pub for lots of tunes and singing.

Saturday... Somehow managed to crawl out of the sleeping bag for breakfast and then into the workshops that began at 9am. I was almost out of my depth with the morning Fieldtown and Bledington workshops (mostly struggling with the slow capers), but I think I can work on a couple of the Fieldtown dances and get them tidied up. Then we had a two hour lunch break which included a much needed relax in the pub. After lunch was one of my favourite traditions, Bampton, and I reckon I have three jigs from there which, with a little more practice I could dance out. Following that was the nightmare that was Sherborne -- a great tradition, but massively different from the others I know (it has its own stepping style), so I spent most of the time tripping over my shoelaces. All that done, we got cleaned up, into our proper dancing kit and settled in for the evening's feast -- a top notch meal which set us up nicely for another long night at the pub which this time also included a few set dances, which is always fun when in a very crowded pub where there's barely room to stand, let alone dance!

Sunday... The last lap, with workshops in Oddington (in which I have a little experience) and Headington (of which I have none). Then a quick reprise session where we had a chance to dance through one jig from each tradition. And finally lunch and home.

So, one hell of a weekend. I learnt a lot, and now know of a lot more stuff I want to learn, plus a few new friends. Hopefully I'll be able to go back again next year, but for now... Well, 48 hours after finishing dancing I am almost starting to feel human again.

The search for the polos

This weekend was our annual pilgrimage to Pembrokeshire for the banquet. We started driving straight after work and after several stops for food, toilet, and getting Miss B into her PJs we made it to our B&B and went straight to bed.

This gave us all Saturday to potter around and get ready, so we took Miss B to run around on a windswept beach before going back for a dose of CBeebies and sorting out our costumes. I don't have any photos of us all though.

This year the theme was the travels of Marco Polo, so dishes served were taken from China, India and Venice, with one return taken from each. As always the food was superb. From China we had mutton dumplings, crispy duck, plum balls (drool!) and "clairvoyant biscuits" as a subtlety. From India it was breads and chutneys, a fantastic "pre-Columban" (i.e. no chillis) chicken curry, a lovely coconut desert thingy, followed by an (un-) subtlety of a very daft Kama Sutra inspired cake. Finally, the Venician return was pigeon and mushrooms in cream (fantastic), salt fish and bread (wow) and a gorgeous lemon torte, with little chocolate thingies as a subtlety to finish off. Of course there was plenty of mead and ale to wash it all down.

<3 and I were doing entertainment again this year as they haven't worked out how to stop us yet, but at least some quality was introduced into the procedings with one of the other banqueters putting her lovely voice to good use. So <3 wowed everyone with a very delicate performance of Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, I got everyone standing up (mostly on chairs), and for this year's firsts: I danced a solo jig in public for the first time (Princess Royal, Bampton — inexpertly, but it went OK) and then drummed (on my djembe -- again inexpertly) for <3 to dance.

Lots of fun. The discussions have already begun on what next year's theme will be.

Dancing the Icknield Way

OK, so this post is long overdue, but better late than never, eh?

So, on 5th September 2009, twenty-odd members of Icknield Way Morris Men rounded off the celebrations of their 50th anniversary year by dancing along 50 miles of the Icknield Way, starting at Ivinghoe Beacon, ending at Wantage, and with twelve intermediate stops (not all of which were at pubs!). We didn't walk the whole way (that would have killed us!) but we made it, all in one day.

The weekend actually started with a trip up to Wilstone on Friday evening (via a chippy in Tring), where we stayed in the village hall -- and had a great session in the local pub, along with men from the local Whitchurch Morris, who were great hosts (and a couple of their men turned out at a couple of our spots along the tour). The evening finished off, probably ill-advisedly, with a few of us having a dance practice (Glorishears, Bledington and Queen's Delight, Bucknell) in the village hall kitchen, fueled by a polypin of Bob which had magically appeared.

A little the worse for wear, we arrived at the car park by Ivinghoe Beacon and started dancing at 08:45 the next morning. It was nice to be met there by a fella from another side (sorry, I can't for the life of me remember which side) in full kit, who joined in with one of our dances. From then on it was a punishing schedule.

Spots were danced at Tring, Wendover (with a side from Aldbury Morris Men), Princes Risborough (including a chance encounter with a visiting morris man), Bledlow, Lewknor (for a nice ploughman's lunch and a parachute display), Watlington (where we seemed to be the only living things), Ewelme, South Stoke, Goring (for tea with the Kennett Morris Men), Blewbury, and East Hendred before finally rolling in to Wantage at about 19:45. One last spell of dancing and it was in to the King Alfred's Head for dinner with the WAGs.

After food and the obligatory speeches, everyone was absolutely shattered, so unusually for the team there were no songs and tunes. Just some quiet conversation for a while before staggering home to bed.

A great day, which I wouldn't have missed for the world, but I think few of us want to do it again in a hurry!

Another bank holiday weekend

Well, we had our annual house/garden party on Saturday and were lucky enough to have good weather and heaps of friends turning up from all sorts of parts of our lives. Quite a lot of ale (and other stuff) got drunk, a great deal of barbecued food (including the fabulous flatbreads) was eaten, and we went into the evening with a nice conservatory tunes session. Win.

Monday was fun too, with a recovery day behind us. We went off the the Uffington White Horse Show, where a strong turnout from the morris performed four spots in various parts of the showground. This was hard work given how warm the day turned out and how out of practice I, at least, had become over the last month or so.

Now, this coming weekend, we have the last really big event of the dancing season (for us, at least): the Icknield Way tour. To celebrate the side's 50th anniversary, we will be travelling along 50 miles of the Icknield Way (using motorised transport, thankfully), dancing at 14 different locations in a single day, before collapsing into a pub back in Wantage for dinner. Wish us luck.

Morris and Mortality

It has been an odd week.

Last weekend we were planning to go to Chippenham Folk Festival. Well, the plan was that I would be there for the whole weekend with the morris, camping for two nights, and <3 and the Youngling would be there for Saturday and Monday, and would do somethig different on the Sunday. Plans changed when the Youngling threw up in her bed on Friday night and we decided that a not-entirely-necessary trip out the following day would probably be less than ideal, so we stayed closer to home for the next couple of days -- at least we got some gardening done! On Monday we took the trip to Chippenham and had a great day dancing in the streets and on the arena stage.

Back at work after the bank holiday things were less happy as the word arrived that my office mate, Steve, had lost his 2 year battle with cancer. I didn't know Steve as well as I would have liked, largely as over the year or so we had shared an office, he had spent a lot of time away for treatment. He was a top bloke though, a pleasure to talk with, and a fighter who kept going far longer than expected and who has helped others like him get the treatment he was originally denied. Steve's death was not unexpected, but the sense of shock and grief in the department this week has been palpable. He really made a mark and will be greatly missed.

After that news, the week has had a slightly weird feel to it. We had a great dance out in Grove on Wednesday, and I now have some pretty decent homebrew beer (which should get better with a bit more conditioning) to drink, but all that doesn't seem to be worth writing about at the moment. I'll have a drink to Steve over the weekend and wish his family well. The funeral is next week and I expect there will be quite a few of us from work in attendance.

A Drop of Nelson's Blood

This weekend was a blinder. On Friday night I went up to Bromsgrove with about 20 other guys, mostly morris men (from various sides), for the stag weekend of our side's squire, who is gets wed in a few weeks' time.

So Friday night involved a load of driving, increased by the fact that the best man (or rather one of them!) had had a flat tyre, broke his jack, and was stuck in the middle of nowhere with four polypins of local ale. We went off to rescue him, hindered by the fact that he was on a road and near a village both small enough that they didn't appear in my road atlas. After eventually homing in, he fixed his wheel and we moved on to the scout hut in which we would be staying and had pies, peas and ale for dinner before heading in to town to a fine pub where we stayed well past midnight, singing and playing, much to the amusement of the landlord and staff, who actually said we'd be welcome back — even after we performed the Upton-On-Severn Bendy Straws dance in the bar.

Saturday was mostly taken up by a trip on the Worcester and Birmingham canal (dressed as pirates), during which we were split between two small narrowboats on a sedate cruise northwards, which took us through two tunnels (the second being some 2.5 km long) and back again. This being a morris outing, there were tunes and songs and much fun had by almost all (the exceptions being a couple of casualties from the Friday night who were struggling somewhat). A few jigs were danced (including one on the roof of a boat), and I have now discovered the joys of tunnel sessions. Playing tunes in a tunnel has an amazing acoustic, but what was really awesome was singing shanties, with 20 men all belting out the responses for all they were worth. Great stuff.

After a curry we were back out in town and ended up back in the same pub as before, where even more dances were performed, many songs sung, and the pub pretty near ran out of ale.

By the time we had got home on the Sunday and I was delivering the stag back to his house, we discovered that he had lost his house keys, so the trip was extended to drop him over at another nearby friend's house until his fiancee got home. You can't beat a bit of excitement like that.

Top weekend.

Hankies at Dawn

So a couple of weeks back I went to my first ale of the year, hosted by the Kennet Morris Men, who organised a stomping evening of pickles, ale, chili, dancing and singing. There was a decent contingent of our side, despite which, I (of all people) was elected to sing on behalf of the side after dinner (the standard etiquette is that each side who has a reasonable turnout provides a song). It all went pretty well apart from me forgetting an entire verse. I don't think many people noticed.

Anyway, the picture is from a massed dance (ales generally involve alternating between one side showing off and massed dances where everyone who wants to gets up and you end up with sets made up of men from mixed sides, which can prove amusing) of Queen's Delight (Bucknell). Now, my first thought on this photo was that I must have been on the wrong foot as I should have been on the same foot as my partner (who is a lot more experienced than I am), but seeing the guys in the next set are also on their left foot, perhaps I was doing it right after all!

Life With Bells On

Yeah, I know I have been going on about morris a bit lately, but this film has just come to my attention. The website has a fantastic trailer and the film has Derek Jacobi in it, so what could go wrong? I'm hoping someone puts it on where I can go and see it (it's not exactly on general release), or at least that it gets on to DVD in the not too distant future. Cracking stuff by the looks of it.

Which one of you is Morris?

Okay, so this is last week's news, but the Morris Ring, one of the three umbrella organisations for morris dancing, has been proclaiming the imminent demise of morris (see BBC News). It seems that the morris is too embarassing for youngsters, so they don't join in, leaving only old farts who will all be dead soon.

I don't know what the intention of the Ring was with this, I suspect they were trying to stir up interest, but it does make them sound distinctly out of touch. If you go to the website of the side I dance for, Icknield Way and look through the info on the side you will see quite a lot of young dancers. Much of this is due to the fact that the side works with a local scout troup every few years to train up some of their lads, and some of these go on to stay dancing with the main team. And morris can be pretty spectacular when danced by an enthusiastic, energetic, young side.

Of course, our side (and many others, by the sound of it) took this bit of publicity as a golden opportunity to get the local media in and let them know that we are a long way from dying out. Our practice session last week was visited by a photographer from a local paper (I haven't seen the article for that yet) and a fella from a local radio station (listen here), who we had a lot of fun getting involved and showing off to.

The prognosis? Well, I reckon we're not going away yet.

The Strangest Plum Puddings That Ever Have Been

Last night I played harmonica solo for a morris dance for the first time ever. OK, so it was during a practice session, but a first is a first. This was the Black Joke from Adderbury, a tune I know pretty well and have played plenty of times at home, or in sessions, and even tootling alongside other musicians for dancing, but solo was a whole new experience.

I had to learn to start properly: for many dances you can just play the tune through a few times and the dancers will come in when they are ready, but as is the case with most Adderbury dances, this music starts with a big chord and then we're straight in with a swagger round. After some advice from the other musicians (who were all dancing) I finally got it right and, apart from a bit of a stumble (which the guys gamely danced through) I think things went OK. We got through the dance, anyway.

Our new squire is keen to add some variety into the side, so I suspect now I've been blooded I'll be asked to play more often. We'll see how things go.

Morris In

I am so annoyed at myself for not taking my camera with me last night. We (in the morris sense) were dancing out at a couple of pubs in the market town on Faringdon. I was in two minds as to whether to go or not because of the combination of distance (not that great, but a bit of a drive) and inclement weather (it had been persisting down all day). But turn out I did, and met up with a bunch more of the team at The Bell, a nice old coaching inn on the market square.

The rain didn't stop much, so we danced for a while underneath the quaint C17th town hall, which was a challenge in itself, trying to avoid the pillars and steps around the edge of the rather restricted space. We had an audience of a few passing teenagers huddled under umbrellas and some smokers (and a big black dog) outside the various nearby pubs, but who cares about audiences?

After a good few dances and a quick "bagging" (administrative) session, we made the short walk up the gentle hill to the next pub, The Folly, under the power of melodeon, harmonica and bells, to be greeted by a shout of "You're late, sod off!" from the landlord, who then went on to say it was good to see us and that the drinks were on the house.

The rain had stopped by this point, so we set up in the street and performed one dance which did a great job of summoning the rain back again, so we gave up and went indoors.

Of course, we didn't want to abuse the landlord's hospitality without putting on a show, so someone had the idea of performing the Upton On Severn Cocktail Stirrer Dance (more often performed with sticks than cocktail stirrers, but sometimes you have to improvise). So there were six of us laying into each other with short lengths of coloured plastic in the corner of a small bar, just in front of the darts board, which made our previous dancing venue seem positively spacious.

Over the following hour we performed a whole heap more dances in ludicrously cramped conditions, which was a lot of fun for us (though very hot and sweaty) and I think the locals enjoyed themselves. Then it was the rest of the evening spend singing songs and playing tunes. I bailed out far too early, but it was a trip home and I needed to be up for work in the morning.

Cracking evening, and very silly indeed.

The Bells, The Bells...

I reckon it's now official: I am a morris man! Saturday saw my first real dance out, first at a local museum and afterwards at a pub in one of the nearby villages.

Somewhere on this page you should see photographic proof of this, as you see part of the set that was dancing the Ring o' Bells from Litchfield. I'm the one on the right with the serious face as I realise that with not one but two sticks, a cock-up here could be quite spectacular. Next to me you see the face of the guy who faced me in the sticking routines and has his eyes shut as he tries to shut out the terror of trying to avoid having his knuckles smashed by the novice opposite him.

You'll be pleased to know that we both survived and later on I actually started to relax and enjoy myself a bit.

Anglos and Ales

Fun over the last few days...

On Saturday I had my first trip out with the morris side to the Icknield Ale. Basically, an ale is a get-together for morris dancers, where there is much dancing, eating, singing and, of course, drinking of ale. Many morris teams host one, generally during the "off-season" and this was the one we hosted. There were nearly 100 men from something over a dozen teams and it was a cracking night. I even ended up dancing sets from a tradition I had not even heard of before, let alone danced. I'm still recovering.

Then on Monday, the Youngling and I went to Oxford and I bought myself a new toy: a Rochelle 30-key, C/G Anglo concertina. So far I haven't had much time playing it, but I'm managing to get a few hesitant tunes out of it. I've been eyeing up this type of concertina for some time (it is widely reckoned to be the best beginner Anglo available, and probably would be at double the price), but finally took the plunge and made the purchase after receiving some money courtesy of my recently departed (and much missed) grandfather, along with the instructions to spend some of it frivolously. I'm not sure that buying a musical instrument is the most frivolous thing I could have done, but from now on the instrument will always be a reminder of Gramp, and should give years of enjoyment, which I think is in the appropriate spirit.