On the 8th and 9th of May we were off to the Holmfirth Festival, a splendidly Northern affair in this traditional old Yorkshire town on the edge of the Peak District. Despite some incredibly unpromising weather leading up to the weekend, the weather stayed remarkably kind throughout, except for a torrential downpour just as the Saturday afternoon procession got going. We did get rather soaked during it despite trying our ‘umbrella shuffle’ procession, and had to stop to shelter at one point, but then the deluge stopped and we caught up with the back of the procession where we were able to conga along the rest of the way just behind the very loud and lively percussion ensemble who were supposed to be ending the procession with style. Instead we ended it without, but we did seem to get well appreciated nevertheless. Apart from this, we had various spots around the town over the 2 days, and a 10 minute spot during the Saturday evening ceilidh with Bedlam, which also seemed to go down well. The in joke of the weekend seemed to be Lee’s alleged lack of height (“stand up when you’re talking to us, Lee .. oh, you are standing up”) which you would have thought correctly would wear rather thin after a short (sorry Lee) while. Still, never let it be said that Berkshire Bedlam let accuracy or taste get in the way of milking a not very amusing in the first place proposition. So I hope that’ll be an end to it Lee. Its simply not fair picking on small people like you, not a tall – sorry, that should say not at all.
The 12th May saw us at the Golden Pot at Eversley, dancing outside where we were surrounded by May flowers and Mayflowers, whose invite it was. And a splendid time was had by all.
After that there were no events until the Whitsun weekend, 29th – 31st, where we were one of the featured teams at the Chippenham Folk Festival, which despite the gloomy forecasts featured pretty good weather until almost the end. Although several of the team had been before in other guises, this was the first invite for BB. Our weekend commitment started on the Saturday with a morning workshop, where Jameson taught Sucking the Monkey and Old Woman to several interested attendees and some of the current team. After that it was a posey procession through town, followed by various dancing spots and then the obligatory BB team-pizza-before-our-evening-ceilidh-spot, never with hindsight one of our better plans. The spot was actually during a dance evening at the Town Hall, and it must be said that we got a surprisingly warm reception for the whole spot, with some of the audience even appreciating Malcolm’s introductory nonsense, the first time any of the team can remember this happening since he set fire to his breeches in a desperate but ill fated attempt to get the audience’s attention.
The Sunday saw us do more spots around town, and then in the afternoon a successful session on the Arena stage, which also seemed to go down well, and Monday featured another workshop (Highland Mary and Mazurka), another procession, and then more spots around town and at the Rose and Crown. By late afternoon a light rain was starting to appear, and the audience was starting to disappear, leaving just ourselves and Witchmen at the Rose and Crown to entertain each other, and us to finish proceedings with an up and down Fairies and walk off.
The first Sunday in June (6th) it was off to the Kirtlington Lamb Ale, where a small but perfectly formed BB team performed creditably at the various venues around the village. Or at least, it did when we got Jameson and Simon back from the clutches (and the floral arrangements) of Rumworth, with whom they had performed on Saturday, and Sue and Bob from Windsor, with whom they still performed intermittently on Sunday. Our highlight though came towards the end of the day in the show spot in the school playground. We were the last of the guest teams to do a show dance before Kirtlington came back on to wrap up proceedings, and while we waited to come on, doing our little running on the spot thing as you do, the m/c (Kirtlington’s Nigel) caught sight of us and proceeded to stretch out his intro for us for as long as he could until we got fed up and ran on anyway. We had chosen to do The Dance of the Big Goblins, for which we got very good feedback afterwards, despite Nigel who together with another Kirtlington colleague kept up a mumbled conversation over the P.A. throughout, audible to all the audience, mainly consisting of somewhat derogatory comments such as ‘haven’t they finished yet..?’. Ah well, it all added to the occasion. And we couldn’t exactly complain to Nigel since once again he and Katie put on a terrific spread afterwards at their home nearby. In fact it was such a good spread we felt a bit guilty about the bagfuls of sugar we emptied into his car’s petrol tank afterwards. Only a bit, though.
Next up was a somewhat different evening on Tuesday 8th June when we had a paid corporate event, performing for UIB Ltd insurance brokers at a gala evening they had organised for overseas clients at the Royal Berkshire Hotel in Ascot. The idea was to have some very English pre-dinner entertainment (i.e. us), and fortunately it was a pleasant summery evening so the visitors were able to mill around on a large outdoor terrace while we performed on nearby on grass. The audience, although perhaps slightly bemused by the idea of English traditional dance, nevertheless seemed to enjoy something rather different, particularly a couple of them who we roped in for ‘Coconuts’. Our hosts had also kindly arranged a room and refreshments for us, where afterwards we were able to enjoy the sandwiches which John hadn’t scoffed and Lee hadn’t licked the toppings off (if you are going to do it, Lee, please don’t put them back on the plate afterwards, there’s a good chap, or we’ll have to keep going on about your height again and frankly we’re all bored of that, little feller). However after enjoying the hospitality all too briefly, we shot off to the Fox and Hounds at Farley Hill to fulfil a long standing engagement with Fleet for the rest of the evening. With hindsight this may have been rather ambitious on our part, as when we turned up our dancing was not very good, although we were doing it on some rather dodgy grass. However Fleet were very forgiving, and at least we were able to enjoy their dancing which as ever included some interesting features in several of their dances.
Then Monday 14th Jun saw us back at The Queens Oak, where Jackstraws and ourselves had invited each other for what turned out to be a very pleasant evening of Cotswold, with Jackstraws hankies flowing as gracefully and effortlessly as ever. And we even had a small audience. Alas, though, the days of foaming jugs of ale brought out after the performance seem to be long gone, possibly because several teams use the Queens Oak as a dance venue these days. But no one else with Berkshire in the name …..
On Thursday 25th we were once again at the Red Lion at Avebury for our annual Thursday dance out around the summer solstice time. This year our friends from Holt Morris were unable to join us, but instead we enjoyed an excellent evening’s dancing with Thames Valley International, a fine long established Cotswold team based in London, Ontario, but with members drawn from all over Canada, North America – and Cornwall. They were in the middle of a week’s (morris) touring of Southern England, dancing with many other good teams, and we were able to enjoy a good evening’s dancing on the newly resurfaced car park (not quite the same without the added pothole hazards of old). The weather had been somewhat dubious during the week and the evening was blustery, so the solstice druids had long gone and we had almost no audience except the ones we brought, but nevertheless between the 2 teams the car park was soon filled with a hubbub of noise – mostly the agonised cries of the TVI team undergoing necessary physiotherapy on the sidelines after a week’s non stop dancing. This was also mixed with the anguished cries of some of BB, since this was the evening of England’s agonising Euro 2004 quarter final against Portugal. In fact once the dancing had finished we repaired to the New Inn at Winterbourne Monkton, just up the road, and half of us watched the unsuccessful penalty shoot out on the TV in the packed main bar while everyone else enjoyed an excellent music and singing session in the back room, all in a very convivial international atmosphere, especially when the landlord showed no strong inclination to close the pub.
This event was immediately followed at the weekend by the 312th annual Dorset Tour, once again centred around Cerne Abbas and the Giants Head camp site where the tough boys and girls camped, while the less tough but more sensible people stayed in a variety of B&Bs nearby. The tour started as so often before at the Smith’s Arms in Godmanstone, where normally we are able to dance outside in the attractive (though small) garden area, but this year the rain was persistently persistent on arrival, obliging one of the tallest teams in England to dance inside one of the smallest pubs in England. But it was an enjoyable start to the weekend, followed by a trip across the rainswept valleys of Wiltshire to the Shave Cross Inn at Shave Cross for lunch. Those who ignored Rob’s directions and worked out for themselves the optimum route arrived in reasonable time, while those who didn’t, didn’t. Never mind, the pub was excellent, and run by one of Wessex Morris Men and therefore morris friendly. As the rain was still doing its stuff we danced this time inside the skittle alley set aside for us, which even at its highest point had a low ceiling, which sloped away alarmingly on either side, as we found out when doing a hasty or ill timed galley, as most of the team’s galleys are come to think of it. But a good lunch and bit of dancing later we were ready for the next bit of the afternoon, an appearance at the Beaminster Festival, with Wessex Morris and the Fabulous Fezheads. However I may have mentioned the rain, which continued during the afternoon, and kept Wessex in the pub (not sure they would have come out even if it had been 30 C degrees), leaving the Fezheads to gather a slightly bedraggled crowd with their inspired routines and us to continue to try not to let it disperse. After that some of us returned to the campsite, which had almost disappeared in the aforementioned mist and rain, where we enjoyed Jerry’s cocktail hour with a Committee Band CD playing through a car window, and all of a sudden life wasn’t too bad. In a break with tradition though, and with safety in mind, we skipped the walk down from the campsite across the ridge into Cerne Abbas and opted for cars.
Once in Cerne Abbas, the rain had just about lifted enough for us to perform outside the Royal Oak, where our own blast from the past Mike Lyth was able to join in one or two dances. Wisely though he stayed clear of Glorisher where due to a mix of weather conditions, sloping surface, and ineptitude Malcolm only managed to get halfway up Lee’s back during the leapfrogs before bringing the pair of them crashing down onto the damp tarmac quite spectacularly, with the unfortunate Lee coming off rather worse, though it did get him out of having to attempt a reciprocal leap. After staggering through more bits of the repertoire we dined most pleasantly at the New Inn before retiring to our first class accommodation or leaky tents …….
The next day however, Sunday, by complete contrast was bright and sunny. Rob had arranged a spot at Highcliffe Castle, Christchurch, and this proved a big success, dancing on the lawns in front of a large outdoor tearoom and restaurant with a ready made crowd who weren’t in any hurry and were quite happy to appreciate a bit of free entertainment thrown in. We put together 2 decent spots for them and from a dance point of view this was definitely the highlight of the weekend. After the dancing finished we had some photograph posing, armed with our new swords which Lee particularly wanted to have photographed before they were first clashed in anger, so to speak. And very bright and shiny they were too. Following this surfeit of posing, several of the team descended down to the beach or undertook cliffside walks in the somewhat blustery though bright and sunny conditions, before dispersing in a Berkshire-wards direction. We had set ourselves the target for the weekend of doing every dance in the repertoire, and in the end despite the restrictions due to the weather on Saturday we managed 28 of the 32 with only 1 repetition, so not bad at all. And overall another great weekend, very ably organised by Rob for whom the usual big thanks, and making it difficult to live up to next year. but he always succeeds somehow …….