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 …….