Once again there was a string of events in November and December to round off the year.
First up was the massed Morris event in Trafalgar Square on Sunday 2nd November, arranged to celebrate Morris Dancing’s exemption from the recent Licensing Act which at one stage threatened to impose unnecessary regulatory restrictions on Morris performances. Although the Act, if interpreted strictly, is still far from satisfactory with regard to the Folk Arts in general, it is to be hoped common sense will prevail, and Morris in particular is exempt from regulation. Because of this exemption, the 3 national Morris organisations, including the Morris Federation of which BB are a part, arranged a celebratory day of dance in Trafalgar Square and BB were one of the 50 sides who took part.
The day started in pouring rain, and we wondered briefly if our motto (‘it never rains on Berkshire Bedlam’) was going to be disproved. But at almost exactly the time we were due to start the rain eased and we were able to splash our way through some of the high points of our repertoire. With so many teams wanting to take part, the spots were limited, but we were able to put on a good show during our turn and even managed to give the new stick dance an airing, and show the audience various different interpretations of the sticking sequence in the chorus.
Two weeks later we had the pleasure of attending and taking part in a momentous 50th birthday celebration for Yvonne Hallows, a Morris musician with local teams including Fleet, an old friend of the team, and long time maker of BB’s rosettes and armbands! The day was based at Eversley Village Hall, and consisted of 4 different ceilidhs plus an evening concert from Spiers and Boden, each with Morris spots during them. We had the privilege of doing a spot during the afternoon ceilidh from the Bismarks, and what a pleasure it was to see our former melodeonist Gareth up there forgetting tunes with a different group for a change. (Only kidding Gareth, you were as fabulous as ever). A great day though, and certainly one to remember for Yvonne and Monty.
That then led up to one of the real highlights of the BB calendar, the annual Bunfight, this year held on Sat 29 Nov. The theme was ‘A Day at the Races’, which brought forward the usual interesting variety of costumes, and the usual challenge of working out what, if anything, any of them had to do with the theme. A special mention though must go to the Marx Brothers outfits, the 118 runners, the girls from the car race sequence in Grease (apparently), and Phungus’s caller Hugh Crabtree who, in a brown coat and bowler, managed to look very convincing as a race starter until he felt compelled to remove it and reveal an England rugby jersey which he had worn at the Rugby World Cup final in Sydney the previous week. Although Phungus’s line up had some enforced late changes, they sounded as good as usual and were much appreciated by a somewhat smaller than normal audience. In the first break, BB again performed the new stick dance, now being called the Dance of the Big Goblins, which went down fine despite Tim’s comedy fall quite early on (should have waited a bit, Tim). At the second break, the team had decided to reprise the sword dance from the summer Sidmouth ‘Flame’ show. However, this is a dance for 8, and for various reasons only 7 fully trained boy Bedlams could be available on the night, making it necessary to draft in our trainee young feller-me-lad Bob to take part. And very well he and everyone else did too, though the beard drawn on with eye-liner was a little unconvincing. The audience certainly seemed to appreciate the performance, Hugh Crabtree said some very nice things about the dance and in particular Sue’s playing, which was fabulous as ever, and an encore was duly performed, this time without the tabards / curtains. Well, its traditional, innit.
And so into next day’s Wokingham Winter Carnival, held as the name suggests in the Winter in Wokingham. A good day of dancing in somewhat dodgy weather, though the rain which had been forecast held off until the procession, which we had chosen not to be in this year, started. You see, it never ….. Anyway, we took the opportunity of having the swords we had hired for the bunfight still with us to do the sword dance again, just outside Woolworths, much to the surprise of the good folk of Wokingham, and much to the concern of the bad folk.
December had the 2 traditional end of year events. First was the BB Xmas dinner at the Hideout Thai restaurant, with the traditional dress code, traditional meal, and Malcolm’s traditional end of year speech with the 2003 BB awards (for those interested, a modified version (slightly less libellous than on the night) is available to read here). This year’s meal though was most unusual in that the money collected at the end of it more or less matched the bill. Unprecedented in BB’s 26 year history.
And finally, the St. Thomas’ Day dance out in Wokingham Market Place on the last Saturday before Xmas, 20th December. Well, what can we say about this except that, I’m afraid, this time it did rain on Berkshire Bedlam. Steadily. And heavily. Until just after we had decided to stop. Still, we got £6 from the street collection which will keep the team going into 2004 (who said ‘Shame’? – oh, you all did).