The first 3 months of the year are always taken up with getting ourselves back to that peak of physical fitness that many top athletes like us enjoy. To help us this year we have been following a special diet prepared for us by the side’s eminent nutritionist, Tim ‘ten-pints-a-day-and-we’re-not-talking-water’ Taylor. Tim, who has recently been seen in newspaper advertisements looking a little like your bank manager just before he tells you he’s calling in your huge loan, has been able to give much guidance on dietary concerns to the rest of the team by being a personal role model on what not to eat or drink. Whatever Tim ingests or imbibes you can be pretty sure is not good for you, so by eating the opposite of what he does, a healthy life is just around the corner. Though that’s probably not exactly what he says to his clients.
Of course its not just the careful diet (would you like a bit more cream with your cream Mr. Lancaster?) that’s been keeping us in shape. Following the Jerry West warm up routines at practice start has been an enormous help – stand still for ages, then dash after a tennis ball that just hurtled by your ear having been clobbered by Jameson, then stand still for a lot longer, then do a completely exhausting dance non-stop for several minutes, then stand around for a lot longer getting cold again while the finer points of the dance are explained to everyone who got it wrong, which is usually quite a long list.
Anyway, its nice to think that as a result of all these efforts the general public will once again soon be able to enjoy the sight of a crack team putting on a fantastic show which will amaze and astound. And if anyone comes across this crack team please let us know.
There have been 2 actual events so far this year, the first occurring on Sat 4 Jan, when the New Year was but a babe in arms. Once again we were the guest Morris side at the Haddenham ceilidh where the band was Asha. We performed two 10 minute routines, which seemed to go down well, though our opening dance for the second spot was ‘Highland-Mary-with-walk-on’, and it would be fair to say the ‘walk-on’ bit did not suffer from being over rehearsed.
Our second event of the year was on Sat 15 March at the Willink School in Burghfield Common where we had been asked to do a performance spot at the Berkshire Schools Folk Day for 7 – 11 year olds. We were the lunchtime entertainment for the kids, and did a number of display dances plus a dance for them to join in with. The session went very well, and Jerry talked them all through a participative version of Shepherds Hey, using Simon as a demonstrator, who demonstrated extremely well even though it wasn’t the version we had practised. Never did quite get the arm movements he was using, although fortunately most of the kids did. After the show we repaired to Lee and Linda’s house round the corner where it was Linda’s xxth birthday and we all celebrated with a spiffing party tea with fizzy drinks and green and red bunny shaped jelly and everything. And we played the chocolate game, you know, the one with hat, scarf and gloves, which you have to put on when you roll a six on the dice when its your turn, and then you can eat some chocolate with a knife and fork until the next person rolls a six. Unfortunately the distribution of chocolate did not turn out particularly fairly for some people despite them rolling loads of sixes, but fortunately I’m not one to bear a grudge.
The next event and season proper starts at the end of April with John and Sarah’s wedding, so watch this space for exclusive pictures which you can be sure you won’t be able to get in your normal glossy magazine reads such as Hello!, OK! or the Morris Fed Newsletter…..