Safely back home (apart from Sue, still chasing bears in Yellowstone) we had an excellent dancing evening on 13 June with Customs and Exiles, at the George and Dragon, Swallowfield. With Emma ably filling in for Sue, we were able to field 2 sets for several dances. A few days later, on Sun 16th, Sue was back to play for us at Nettlebed Village Hall, at an event to celebrate 100 years of the hall, a fascinating building and where amongst other things Nettlebed Folk Club put on top quality folk acts every Monday evening throughout the year. As many of the side are regular visitors there, we were glad to join in the celebrations and were pleased to be able to do a dance with our swords which Nettlebed helped fund the purchase of several years ago.
Then Sat 22nd saw us again joining Abingdon Traditional Morris Dancers for the Abingdon ‘Mayormaking’ day, which we previously attended in 2009. The day is centred around the election of a ‘Mock Mayor’ of Ock Street. The election takes place in the afternoon – prior to this there is dancing around Abingdon before the election takes place at the Brewery Tap pub. Once elected, the new mayor (once again this year the same as the old mayor) is carried around the streets on a chair supported by poles, with the poles and chair carried on their shoulders by Abingdon Morris dancers and also their guest team i.e. this year us. The trick when carrying is not to be too tall, as it’s the tall ones who finish up with the most weight while the shorter ones walk along looking innocent. At the end of the day’s dancing there was once again an excellent supper provided in the 15th century grade 1 listed Long Gallery, part of Abingdon’s old Abbey buildings. After the supper there were some excellent entertainment provided by way of some high quality floor spots, with Jameson once again very capably painting the parlour on our behalf, so to speak.
The following weekend we were off to Dorset once again for our ‘annual’ Dorset Tour – in fact the first true Dorset Tour for 3 years, having skipped a year in 2012 and gone to Devizes in 2011. Once again based at the Giants Head campsite outside Cerne Abbas, Rob and Lee had put together the weekend’s programme, and were rewarded with some excellent summer weather throughout. Many of the side arrived on the Friday evening, but the weekend’s dancing started on the Saturday morning with dancing outside the long since closed former smallest pub in England, the Smith’s Arms at Godmanstone. The pub and immediate area were completely deserted, but while lining up alongside the road for a photo, a coach swooped by at which we waved, as you do. To our surprise it then stopped just down the road, and a coachload from the West Midlands, on their way to Dorchester, got out to watch us for a couple of dances. And then when we were on the point of leaving, a car with a couple from New Zealand stopped just opposite and we rolled out another couple of dances. We then moved on to the Wise Man pub at West Stafford for lunch before heading into Weymouth on the new Park & Ride. On a beautiful sunny afternoon we danced by the Clock Tower on the prom before some of the hardier members of the party headed into the sea, and the less hardy ones headed for the ice cream kiosks. Later on back at the campsite it was time for various cocktails, followed by barbequing (or in David’s case cremating) an array of livestock and poultry, before commencing the walk (by various routes this year) down into the village of Cerne Abbas for an evening’s dancing outside the Royal Oak. By the end of the evening we found during the day we had done no less than 35 different dances (out of our total repertoire of 39) and 41 dances altogether, probably a record for BB for an individual day’s dancing.
The next morning after packing up we headed to the Anchor Inn at Shapwick for more dancing in the road outside, and then on to Kingston Lacy, an impressive National Trust property near Wimborne. The dancing concluded there with a couple of good spots in one of the courtyard areas, after which we had a late lunch in the self service restaurant. Rob had programmed this, for reasons best known to himself, as a ‘surprise lunch’, but the biggest surprise to him as much as anyone is that we weren’t charged for it after our earlier displays. A good way to finish what had been a very satisfying weekend, and on finally counting up it was found over the weekend we had done 54 dances altogether, including all 39 which can be said to form part of the current repertoire. It had also been excellent practice for some of the big events still to come during the summer…
