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.

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.

Two Weeks

So we had two whole weeks off work thanks to a combination of public holidays, Xmas closures and a little use of annual leave.

The plan was to fly to Ireland on the Monday before Xmas to stay with the in-laws for a week, having spent the previous couple of Xmases at home. Unfortunately, the Youngling contracted chickenpox with the impeccable timing required to prevent the trip. (It could have been worse: if she'd developed the spots while we were over there, we may not have been able to travel home!) So, a hasty bit of replanning was required.

Meanwhile, our car's recent reliability issues finally got to the point where we couldn't trust it to get us to work, let alone to an airport on time. Getting it fixed, we figured, would pretty much be throwing good money after bad, so we went looking for a replacement in a hurry. Luckily someone at work was selling something suitable at a suitable price, so we managed to get ourselves sorted there. And we have since managed to pass the old car on to someone else who doesn't mind doing some work on it.

Xmas day worked out pretty well for an improvised one: we ate duck and had to bribe the Youngling with chocolate to get her to open her presents. Actually, by the end of the holiday, with several bouts of presents (including a birthday), she was getting a bit too good at opening packages.

On Boxing Day, thanks to a bit of hasty rebooking a few days earlier, we flew out to Ireland to have a shortened visit which was still good. The big discovery here was how much simpler and mellower it is to travel through Knock airport instead of our previous main choice of Dublin. I mean, we get off the plane, walk through the nearest door, wave passports at an immigration guy and, just past him our bags were turning up on a carousel. How cool is that?

New year's eve involved a trip to stay with I&E in South Wales, as per last year. Another great, mellow party with some good friends. We seem to developing new traditions, like substituting the theme from The Archers for the more usual Auld Langsyne at midnight.

Then after a couple of nights back at home, we were off to Wales again, this time to Pembrokeshire for another banquet, this time to celebrate a birthday. And much fun, food, mead and ale was had by all.

So, it's a new year and I'm back at work again. So far, so good...

One More Couple, Please

Last night <3 and I got out for one of our rare nights out thanks to one of her friends stepping up for babysitting duty. So we pottered off to Grove for a ceilidh organised by White Horse Ceilidhs. These guys organise half a dozen or so ceilidhs each year and the one we had been to previously was great fun, so a return visit was always on the cards.

This time was every bit as good as last time. The band was Boldwood, who specialise in playing tunes found in C18th manuscripts, and are effective proof that the modern era does not have the monopoly on great dance tunes. We came home with a copy of their CD, which is a really nice listen. I'm going to have to see if I can learn a tune or two off there. The caller was Will Hall, a chap who occasionally attends our local pub sessions and who has proved a great help to me in getting used to learning and playing folk tunes, and who is a lot of fun to play with, even with my very limited skills and repertoire. Anyway, this was the first time I've seen Will call a dance, and I really enjoyed it: his choice of dances was a lot of fun and he had a great, gentle presentation style. (I don't have much to compare with, being pretty new to ceilidhs, but he's definitely good.) Half-time entertainment was courtesy of the energetic and enjoyable Borders morris side, Armaleggan, who did a great, manic show full of sound and fury.

So, we danced to the point of exhaustion, we chatted, and we won a big box of fudge in the raffle. All good. Time to decide when we can next make it...