Reports from the
year 2007
SPRING
2007 - BB at the BBC - but it's only easy if you know it .....
 Our
30th birthday year got under way in February with an event which was
nothing to do with dancing, as a BB team went off to Television Centre
in Shepherds Bush for the day, to take part in the TV general knowledge
quiz programme 'Eggheads' which when transmitted runs on BBC2 on
weekdays around 6.00 pm, and for which they had blagged their way
through an audition before Christmas. Introduced by Dermot Murnaghan,
the programme features a team of 5 challengers taking on the resident
'Eggheads', all general knowledge experts and quiz champions in their
own right, including former winners of Mastermind, Brain of Britain, 15
to 1, and Judith Keppel, the first person to win a million on Who Wants
to be a Millionaire. After 4 short individual head to head contests on
specialist subjects drawn at random, whoever is left on either team
joins the final member for a general knowledge round. The challenging
team is playing for prize money which increases by £1,000 for every
programme that the Eggheads win (which not surprisingly is most of
them), and the money keeps increasing until it is won, after which it
reverts to £1,000.
The BB programme was eventually transmitted on BBC2 in September 2007, and
suffice it to say we lost out on the £59,000 on offer - but only narrowly,
thanks to the heroic efforts of our stars Andy and Jameson - and at one point
there was a hiatus while one of the critical Egghead team answers was checked,
during which we allowed ourselves to consider the possibility that we might have
won. But their answer was OK, and eventually we duly lost. However those who went had a great day out, and
enjoyed the brief chance to be luvvies once again. During the filming
there were some chances to talk a little about Morris Dancing and what
BB are all about, some of which made it to the final cut including the
key words gusto and spirit, though sadly not Paul's interesting on camera explanation of how Morris
Dancing is to be found around the world, "including in former
Commonwealth countries such as Australia and
America"?
Our
dance season proper got under way on 24th February with another
appearance at the Berkshire Schools Folk Day, a very worthwhile day
organised and run by various volunteers to provide primary school
children across Berkshire with the opportunity to learn something of and
take part in various folk music and dance activities. As we have done
previously, BB were asked to provide some lunchtime entertainment while
the children (and their teachers) took a break. A full turnout of BBs
went through their stuff in fine style, and Tim led the audience
participation versions of Shepherds Hey and Knees Up, by the end of
which most of the children were considerably better at them than certain
members of BB. Especially at Knees Up, which still seems to remain as
complicated to some as Einstein's Relativity Theory, Schrodinger's Cat
Theory, or Schrodinger's Hat Dance.
 Then
on 14th April we were off to Birmingham for the third joint Morris
Organisations Day of Dance, designed to promote and raise awareness of
the Morris following successful events in Trafalgar
Square in London in 2005, and in Newcastle in 2006. On a bright and pleasantly warm day, with over
40 teams attending altogether, BB found themselves with Windsor and
Eryri, performing at different venues around the city, starting at the
Bullring Centre, and moving on later to Victoria Square and the
Cathedral. We had a successful day, particularly outside the cathedral
where we attracted much interest from the large crowds enjoying the
sunshine, and where at one point Tim, Jerry and Lee persuaded several of
the livelier younger people congregated around the square to join in a
potentially pear shaped but ultimately successful version of Coconuts,
though with hand clapping rather than anything with public liability potential.
Overall the whole day was well organised and seemed to achieve its aims
of spreading awareness, putting on good shows, and letting people enjoy
themselves. Can't ask for much more .......
On 20th April we were asked to perform at a St. George's Day military
dinner at a military establishment at Hermitage, near Newbury. A fine
evening, with lots of patriotic St. George's flags around the room, and
an evening programme celebrating Englishness in various ways,
culminating in a splendid fireworks display to stirring classical music.
Our part was to provide some traditional entertainment during the meal,
and the audience were very appreciative and supportive from the start,
clapping along to our first dance 'Wheel of Fortune', done of course to
a stirring version of 'British Grenadiers'. They also tolerated our
final dance, a not very successful version of Jolly Jockey Sticks, for
which we blame the atmospheric (i.e. extremely dark) lighting
conditions. Its been a while since we dropped quite so many sticks
during that dance - and goodness knows how many it might have been if we
hadn't practised it endlessly a few days before ....
SUMMER
2007 - We go North and hit 30 not out
Practice
night on May 10th featured a special birthday for one member of the
side, but Jameson wouldn't tell us exactly how old he was except it was
something between 39 and 41. Although the objective on the night was to
do 40 dances to mark the occasion, we actually only managed around 20,
but still its not the number
its the quality. And he enjoyed his pirate cake.
Saturday 12th May saw us in central London for the Westminster Morris
Day of Dance, an excellent day featuring mainly traditional Morris Ring
teams plus ourselves. We danced in some well known locations around the
Westminster area including outside Westminster Cathedral and in Trafalgar
Square, performing mainly to slightly bemused but nevertheless
entertained tourists. There was also a fair emphasis on pub breaks
during the day so no opportunities for getting too dry.
 The
following weekend we were off to North Yorkshire along with other guest
teams Mortimers, (plus Flag & Bone Gang for the Sunday only), for a
weekend with Betty Luptons Ladle Laikers, who we have come to know quite
well in recent years. Lovely people and excellent hosts, though it gets
confusing to keep up with the various interrelated teams that some of
their dancers and musicians are with! After meeting in Knaresborough on
the Friday evening, on Saturday we visited first Fountains Abbey, where
the remains of the Abbey formed a dramatic backdrop to our dancing and
picnicking, and then Ripley, with another excellent venue for dancing
outside the Castle grounds (and the sharing of Rob's ice creams).
Saturday evening consisted of a fish and chip supper at Bishop Monckton
Village Hall, with dancing to a good scratch band of assorted musicians,
interrupted by various spots from the guest teams. As it was Bettys'
30th birthday, the theme of the evening was Pearls, and the guest spots
included a dance with kitchen utensil percussive body popping
accompaniment from our hosts, a Pearly Queens dance from Mortimers, and
a 'University Challenge' type quiz from Flag & Bone, scripted by
Jeff Garner, with the subject being the life and works of Jameson
Wooders (Jameson very modestly managed to put up with being the centre
of attention for a few minutes and looked disappointed when the spot had
finished). BB's contribution was to do our Sword Dance dressed as
pirates (Curse of The Black Pearl and all that) which meant like we
normally do it but with more oohh-aarrh ing and more pirate-y outfits.
And Jameson got to wear his parrot again, which was nice. And then on the Sunday we were in Harrogate, finishing off with all the teams performing
in the Valley Gardens, home of some natural springs though by now our
own natural springs were somewhat losing their bounce. But a very
enjoyable weekend as always in the Bettys' company.
On Wednesday 30th May we were pleased to perform at the May Ball for the
Bracknell and Wokingham Challenge Club, a weekly club for adults with
learning difficulties. Then Sunday June 3rd saw us at Kirtlington again
for the traditional Kirtlington Lamb Ale, as always with some excellent
teams, and ably organised by Kirtlington Morris. We had a relatively
small (in numbers) side but enjoyed the day as ever, which culminated as
usual with Kirtlington's Nigel muttering disparagingly at us as he introduced our
show dance in the school playground. The day just wouldn't be the same
without his insults ....
Thursday June 21st was Solstice night at the Red Lion at Avebury, once
again with the lovely Holt Morris, fine dancers and voices all of them.
Andy again played a key part in our post-dancing vocal renditions though
apparently had a bit of trouble with some of the words this year leaving
Holt ahead on the singing side - but we'll get them next year ...
 Then
the weekend of Friday June 29th - Sunday July 1st was the event we had
all been looking forward to for some time, BB's 30th birthday
celebratory weekend. The weekend, with a loose theme once again of
Schooldays, had been organised by the committee of John, Bob and Jerry,
all of whom put in sterling efforts, though Jerry in particular did a
fantastic job in making sure everything happened as it was supposed to.
The weekend was based at Polehampton Junior School in Twyford, which
turned out to be a really good venue, providing playing fields for
camping, hard standing for caravans, and an almost free run of the school's
facilities over the weekend. Our guest teams - Chinewrde, Ouse
Washes, The Witchmen, The Flag & Bone Gang, and Gog Magog for the
Saturday - were a good mix of excellent sides performing quite different
kinds of dance, but all of them to very high standards, and all of whom
know how to entertain audiences. The weekend started on the Friday
evening with a get together in the school hall, partly fuelled by the 6
barrels of beer laid on for the weekend. Then after breakfast on the
Saturday the sides split into 2 tours, one group proceeding to Reading
on the train, the other group dancing briefly in Twyford before also
heading into Reading by train. Now, it has to be said that at this point
the weather outlook was less than promising. This was the end of the
week which had seen exceptionally heavy rain and floods in many parts of
the country, and the forecast for this weekend had been looking bleak
too. The Saturday morning started off pretty wet making the morning
dance spots a bit damp, but as the day wore on the weather improved and
everyone finished up having a good day with plenty of good dance
opportunities. The Reading dance spots were the Oracle display area in
the morning and again later in the afternoon, and the 2 canalside pubs
The Fisherman's Cottage and The Jolly Angler, both of which were exceptionally
friendly and welcoming. Lunch was at The Back of Beyond, a Wetherspoon's
pub which was also very welcoming, and had cleared a large space for us
all as well as providing a very rapid service for food. After this, all
of the teams proceeded to The Oracle, where the largely covered display
area with tiered seating provided an excellent venue, with good
audiences who appreciated the wide variety of Morris styles on display,
all performed to an extremely high standard.
After this it was back to the school for afternoon tea, and to go
swimming, chill out or take part in the School Sports day. Flag &
Bone were selling sick notes for those that didn't want to take part,
but several did, and it was the Flag & Bone team who did Yorkshire
proud, winning enough individual events to be declared overall winners,
and prompting Ted, Jeff and Mike to go on a lap of honour of the school
hall using a trophy temporarily nicked borrowed from
the trophy cabinet. This led into the evening Barbeque supper, followed
by a ceilidh with the excellent Geckoes, featuring our own Andy on a
variety of bass-y guitars. The ceilidh had to be interrupted a couple of
times, the first time for puddings (which had at last thawed), Irish
bingo, Tim's 'all you never wanted to know about BB' quiz results (Emma,
you know far more than is good for you), and a highly entertaining spot from Ouse Washes, featuring some fine dance
from 2 of their enthusiastic younger members. The second interruption
was for BB to reprise one of their favourite spots of recent years,
their Men In Black routine, and giving
us the opportunity once again to be black-suited, booted, and shaded
while performing various odd shaped moves to a funky techno dance track.
After that was cake - a ceremonial parading round the room, and then
cutting and sharing, of the celebratory 30th birthday cake which Bob had
created, with edible photos of the old and current teams on top -
bizarrely, several people wanted to eat their own picture which must
show something strange lurking in their psyche...
 The
next day had been planned for Henley, where despite threatening skies
the day stayed fine and dry, with excellent dancing conditions. A week
before the famous annual regatta, there was a lot going on in the town
and by the river, but the dancing started in the Market Place where all
the teams performed in turn, again putting on a fine show. After a beer
break, the dancing concluded at Mill Meadow, down by the Thames,
where an appreciative audience was again treated to some fine dancing
before BB finished the performances with the Dance of The Little
Fairies, followed by getting everyone present (audience and guest teams)
to share in the magic of the occasion by getting them to go through the
'Magic Arch' formed at the end of the dance. (By the way, to
everyone who went through - sorry but it wasn't really magic, even if
you went through 3 times as we noted certain people doing). That marked
an end to the formal proceedings, and time to say goodbye to all of our
very welcome guests, before BB went back to the school for a tidy up
followed by a welcome swimming session in the sunshine which had finally
emerged. A great
weekend for all of us, and we think it went down well with our guests
too. Well done again Jerry!
A week later (Sat 7 July) saw us in Richmond for a Day of Dance hosted
by Hammersmith, along with Chiltern Hundreds, New Esperance and Black
Annis. This was a walking tour, visiting 6 pubs, starting at the Orange
Tree and including along the way The Roebuck at the top of Richmond Hill
with fine views over the Thames, and the White Cross down by the Thames.
A good day's dancing in fine weather, welcome after all the rain of May
and June, and Hammersmith were in fine form despite some of their
members being hived out for the day to some of the guest teams
(including of course Jameson to us). And the crib boards never came out
all day ....
AUGUST - Festival time
August
saw us at 2 major festivals, at Sidmouth earlier in the month, and then Towersey
over the Bank Holiday weekend. At both festivals we were performing as BB and
also doing our Big Caper show with the Outside Capering Crew. After the poor
weather of the early summer, both festivals were blessed with good weather and
we put on good shows at both of them, with decent audiences for our Big Caper
shows in boith places. The Sidmouth show had some drama when poor Sue Graham's
recently dislocated shoulder went again doing the Fools Jig during the early
part of the show, but the rest of the troopers carried on and more or less
covered her absence. For Towersey Sue was substituted by Emma Darby, who had
just won the solo jig competition at Sidmouth, and did a fine job with the rest
of the Crew at the Festival and with us in the Big Caper show. For some photos
of both these events see Gallery
2007 Jul - Sep - no gory pictures though!
AUTUMN
2007 - and the Big Caper goes East-ish
The
1st of September saw us in Wallingford for a scaled down version of the
Bunkfest, a festival which had been growing in size in recent years but
needed to scale back in 2007 with a view to coming back stronger in
2008. Nevertheless several Morris sides including BB turned up on the
day and enjoyed some good dancing around the town though without all the
attractions there had been on the Kinecroft in recent years. For BB
though, of course, there is a hidden agenda to the Bunkfest as it is the
one day of the year when we get to enjoy Sue's beautiful chunks (of the
pineapple variety) in her garden after the dancing. And a variety of
other delicacies this year too - you can never have too much cake, can
you?
Thursday 13th was another of the year's big birthdays for side members,
with Paul leading the celebratory evening dancing in Wokingham Town
Centre before leading the expedition to Pizza Express to add slightly
more calories than had just been burnt off. You can never have too much
pizza, can you?
On Saturday 29th, along with several other sides we were guests of
Kennet Morris as they celebrated their 50th anniversary with a Day of
Dance, to go with the various other celebrations that had already
happened throughout 2007. They had managed to arrange 3 different tours
for the day, and we were on the South Berkshire/Hampshire Tour, visiting
Farnham, Birdworld, and 3 pubs (well, you can never have too much beer,
can you?). Performing in Birdworld with our jangling bells was an
interesting experience, as I'm not sure most of the inhabitants (i.e.
the birds) were familiar with the Morris etiquette of not squawking
during the dancing - well, unless it's at Hammersmith, of course. Later
on, all the sides returned to the Terrace at South Hill Park for a
massed stand and more Happy Birthdays before an evening Feast. Well, you
can never have too much hog, can you?
 And then onto 24th October, when BB and the Capering Crew joined forces
once again as The Big Caper to head to Germany for the 'Oldboys' Festival (all performers
supposed to be over 30), based in the former East German town of
Ribnitz-Damgarten, in the north of Germany close to the Baltic coast.
There were teams from 8 countries taking part in this: ourselves from
England plus teams from Togo, South Africa, Poland, Austria, Serbia,
Hungary, and the local German side. The main activities were spread over
4 days, and all the performances took place at the large adapted Sports
Hall, which had been fitted for the occasion with a big stage,
impressive light and sound systems, plenty of room for the audience at
long tables, and a bar which seemed to be open 24 hours. From the moment
we arrived at Hamburg airport, we were looked after most efficiently,
with a coach laid on to take us to the small but very pleasant hostel
which we had exclusively, and next to a catering college where we were
served 3 meals a day which on the whole were very good though with a
slight emphasis on processed meats and cheese. Still, you can never have
too much processed meat or cheese, can you? - well yes, actually.
 Our trip
hadn't started too promisingly, when on the way to the
departure gate at Heathrow, Simon Pipe decided to try his new earplugs,
apparently bought to cope with Lawrences's snoring, and got one stuck.
Still, he enjoyed his trip to Hillingdon Hospital to remove it, and we
enjoyed seeing his luggage removed from the plane as we boarded. It also
meant that Simon had the chance to experience the very efficient German
train network after he flew out on his own the next day, still arriving
in time for our first performance though not our pre performance
rehearsal. Such things are not really a problem for Simon, who prefers to live on the
edge, though they are something of a problem for everyone else as we try to work
out which edge he is on at any particular moment. Due to another
administrative oversight 4 sets of bacca pipes and a large flag spent
the week at Jerry's house rather than the festival, but the flag plan
was waived (gettit?) and the bacca pipes substituted by belts, after
only a short 3 hour discussion about the rationale for getting the belts
on stage (though in fact the belt plan worked well when used).
Altogether we had 5 performances, though none of them was more than 20
minutes, and therefore the one hour show we had been told to prepare for
and which we had carefully rehearsed, was slightly redundant. However we
put the best elements from it into a 20 minute routine which each side
had to perform during the prize show on the Saturday, with 2 prizes at
stake - an audience prize voted for by the audience, and a jury prize,
voted for by a jury made up of one representative from each side - a bit
like X-Factor, but with less tears. No, we didn't win either of the
prizes, although we felt our performance had gone very well - however we
were up against some extremely high standard sides with very good, slick
and carefully rehearsed routines. In addition, we weren't sure whether the
audience really 'got' English Morris dancing as it was unlikely they
would have come across it before, as opposed to the West and East
European routines. Well, that's what we told ourselves anyway, after the
Serbians won the audience prize and the local German side won the jury
prize, which our judge Shirley agreed was a fair result as they let her
out of the straightjacket.
 Overall though
the trip went very well, we were all happy with our performances,
and we were generally well looked after though it was difficult to find
out sometimes what was really going on. We also spent more time hanging
around waiting for our turn than was really necessary (though the dinky
free heart shaped ice creams helped the waiting), missing out on
opportunities to see more of the local area. Perhaps also it was a
shame there was not more opportunity for fraternisation with the other
teams - although some joint events were arranged they were not well
attended, and were dominated by extremely loud live bands and Europop
discos which were perhaps a little out of keeping at a European Folk
Festival. However one of the bands, Polkaholics (German Polka/Reggae/Ska - you
can never have too much German polka, can you?), was extremely good and
shifted a large number of CDs to us afterwards. Of the other teams, the
Austrians provided lively and varied routines (4 lederhosen clad
woodchoppers laying into an innocent log will remain in the memory, as
will the tuned cowbells and the bloke who stood there doing nothing but
cracking a 40 foot whip for a few minutes - not someone to argue with),
and the Serbians had some spectacular Russian Cossack style (or possibly
Serbian style) routines. We suspect though that the Serbians had a few under 30
ringers in there, whereas we only had the one ringer in Emma,
substituting for Sue Graham who of course had injured her shoulder
dancing with the Big Caper in Sidmouth. The trip was also notable for
the final performances as part of the Capering Crew and Big Caper from
Brian, who had decided beforehand to spend more time with his Maths marking in
future - he will be much missed in our performances. And the crew will
have to get someone else to beat up Simon P during some of their dances
- no shortage of volunteers I suspect, though of course shortage will be
an essential prerequisite of any replacement .......
For full reports from 2006 go to the BB 2006 Monthly Diary
For full reports from 2005 go to the BB 2005 Monthly Diary
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