Our 2005 year started about as early as it possibly could with an appearance at the New Year’s Day Haddenham ceilidh (where the band was Steam Chicken – very good too, especially with a bit of tabasco). With 2 separate spots to fill, it seemed appropriate to end the second one with our sword dance, which went very well in the large space available. Both spots were well received, possibly on account of people’s New Year goodwill, or perhaps just because we were stonking (oops, the spell checker is sure that word should be stinking. Do you think the spell checker was in the audience?).
Our next public outing was a lunchtime display on 5th March at the Berkshire Schools ‘Folk for Berkshire’ day at Theale School, near Reading, where we did some display dances before Tim got all the kids up doing his inimitable version of Shepherds Hey, including of course the teapot chorus. As usual, by the end of it some of them were doing the dance better than certain members of Berkshire Bedlam, but then the kids don’t have the disadvantages some of BB have like dodgy knees, shin splints, calf strains, imbecility and a complete lack of rhythm. We finished the display with another outing for the sword dance, introduced officially for the first time as Aston King Dance Number One. Anybody geddit?
On Sat 19th March a small but perfectly formed BB contingent headed to Nottingham for the Fabulous Fezheads Fig and Date Fayre, held at the Yacht Club, Long Eaton, Nottingham. It is hard to find the right words to describe this day, though that very feat is currently being undertaken by Lee, who has prepared an early draft which although very good is slightly longer than War and Peace – rest assured you can read it here when he has finished editing it. Meanwhile, the gist of the day was some organised dancing from the several guest sides, and a series of suitably figndate-y games organised by the Fezheads, including spitting dates through the eye of a camel, fruit rounders (very messy), fig and spoon race, vegetable conkers (even more messy), chillifig eating, a Belly dance competition, and other bits of inspired lunacy. For BB, the organised dancing featured the debut of ‘Burka Bedlam’, while later Paul and Lee spat their dates and Jameson belly danced anonymously-ish in his burka, as you do. A special mention also to Tim for chomping away on his chilli filled dates, each of which apparently contained approximately 300 times the maximum government recommended safe levels of chilli.
On Mon 18 April, we were invited to take part in Ashley Hutchings ‘Morris On’ show at Nettlebed folk club, a highly entertaining 2 hour plus show featuring folk rock interpretations of Morris tunes, some contemporary material, and some excellent dancing from the Outside Capering Crew. We were given a self contained spot of our own within the show of 10 minutes, during which we did the 3 dances we had carefully been rehearsing for the previous 2 weeks, though we had to change the personnel around a little on the night when one of our team members didn’t make it having been struck by a severe bout of amnesia. Still we hardly missed Jerry (oops, given away the name now), and performed a well received set consisting of Fairies, As The Tide was Flowing, and Coconuts, all of which had been modified in presentation to suit the narrow performance space between the band and the audience. We also reappeared during the finale, doing a procession across the stage and round the whole of the hall before returning to the excellent buffet in the performers area which included a very tempting nettle pie (I feel though I should point out this is probably only really tempting if you like nettles).
The following Saturday (23rd April) found us at Adderbury as a guest side at the annual Adderbury Day of Dance, led by the two morris teams located there i.e. Adderbury and Adderbury Village. Along with our hosts and fellow guest sides Armaleggan and Bloxham, we performed in the early evening outside The Bell, and The Coach and Horses, to quite a large crowd of morris people and also many locals, as the day is quite a renowned local event with the morris forming an integral part. Among the more memorable parts of the dancing was Adderbury Village’s Shepherds Hey drinking jig, where each dancer in turn has to dance a chorus and then down a pint in one. It has to be said that though all 12 of the dancers managed it with varying degrees of success (and at varying speed with age certainly being a telling factor) the hobby horse struggled greatly and spilt most (all right all) of his pint on the pavement when it was held to his lips. Anyway, after we had done our bit there was a buffet laid on for the guests and amazingly we seemed to be pretty well at the front of the queue again. Just got lucky, I guess?
The last Thursday in April (this year falling on the 28th) usually marks our official opening to the season and is when in most previous years we have had our ‘Bob’s Fish and Chip Shop Tour’, a bit of a misnomer as we haven’t been there for some years and have just danced at the Queens Oak in Finchampstead. Anyway this year the opportunity arose to mark the season opening in a slightly different way from usual with – what else but – a sing-a-long Sound of Music evening at the Wilde Theatre, South Hill Park, Bracknell. Why? – well our interest in all things Julie Andrews goes back to our very successful weekend with Betty Luptons in Yorkshire 4 years ago when we had a Sound of Music themed evening which included singing along gustily to some of the songs, and since then we have been looking for an opportunity to repeat the experience. Paul had managed to persuade South Hill Park management to let us perform outside the theatre at the start of the evening and again at the interval, so once again 8 Bedlams donned the (imitation) lederhosen and the (cardboard) green hats with feathers, and, accompanied by Frau Jane and Frau Bob, metamporphosed into the Schwarzkopf Bavarian dancers, performing Der Mazurka, Der Tanze von Grossen Goblenz, and as a highlight the resurrected Bavarian Woodchopper Boy dance, performed to an audience consisting largely of nuns, but also a brown paper package tied up with string, and somewhat implausibly a lady in a mountain costume with tiny nun cut outs ascending it, prompted perhaps by her ‘Climb Me’ sign. In between and after our performances we did actually sit through the entire Sound of Music film with subtitles for singing along to, prompted by the evening’s compere who encouraged us to wave our arms when we saw mountains, hiss the countess, make woof-y noises when Rolf came into view, and several other things including letting off party poppers when Christopher Plummer gets to snog Julie Andrews for the first time (a particular highlight). The audience responded magnificently throughout and we all needed a good lie down when it had finished, especially since as far as I could see the film had not been abridged at all for the singalong version and appeared to last for many many hours (possibly 16 going on 17?).
And so (a needle pulling thread?) on to our first major event of the season, May 7th – 8th, a mainly bright and sunny weekend at the Weymouth Folk Festival – not a huge event, but one which was highly enjoyable overall. It was nice to see almost a full complement of BB dancers and musicians who between them contributed to a number of memorable moments, starting on the Saturday morning when John immobilised his car by temporarily losing a small but critical bit out of his key, necessitating a tow into the nearby car park from Rob before the critical bit was found. After dance spots at the White Hart and the (now non-existent) Maypole in town, we took part in the Morris procession along the promenade from the Clock tower to the Pavilion complex (the main centre of activities over the weekend). This was one of our more enjoyable processions due to the number of photo posing opportunities, plus the unscheduled boarding of a coach of very pleasant ladies not in the first flush of youth, who seemed delighted to see us and took lots of photos of us sitting at the back of their coach (once they had put their teeth in and worked out how to operate their cameras). However, our subsequent game of beach cricket must then have taken more out of us than we thought, judging by the (lack of) quality of our following set at the Ocean Rooms. Later on we ran a workshop, which turned out to have not been advertised anywhere, making it a miracle that one person (Alex) did actually turn up for it, though just one was all we needed for the BB workshop-a-thon machine to swing into action and teach a couple of dances. The workshop took place on the large stage in the Pavilion Theatre, on which we were due to take part in the Morris On show later (the same show we had participated in at Nettlebed some 3 weeks earlier). Being there gave us the chance to do some revised planning for the show, since Ashley Hutchings had just broken it to us he wanted us to do two spots in the show instead of one, and we also had to take account of Simon’s back locking up fairly dramatically. However our time in the theatre also gave us the chance to fully explore all the dressing rooms, and Paul in particular was struck with the idea he was looking out of the very same windows which top names like the Brotherhood of Man Lookalike Tribute Band may have lobbed TVs through. Anyway later on that evening we did actually perform in the show, in which members of Morris Offspring accompanied the band on some numbers, while we had 2 sets of our own, one in each half. Despite the very confined dance space, the spots both went very well, leading to good feedback throughout the rest of the weekend. And again, led by Tim, we got the chance to leap across, up, down and around the stage in the finale.
On the Sunday, injuries and absence had taken their toll, but we were able to start with a spot at the Maypole, where Alison, sitting on some stone steps huddled under John’s cloak, was taken pity on by a kind hearted passer by and given 50p despite the absence of a dog on a rope. We then went back to the Ocean Rooms for a jig event where amongst other teams efforts, Jameson and Tim performed a stylish Princess Royal, and we liberally interpreted the event definition by doing Arse about Face for 6 (well it arguably still is a jig). Before going off to the White Hart for our last set of the weekend, the Theatre Manager proudly presented Bob with his / her missing drumstick, thereby making his / her day, and for which the Theatre Manager was rewarded with a hearty handshake / a sloppy kiss. At the White Hart, Jerry and Paul did a fine version of Old Molly Oxford before our final dance, a stonking Little Fairies. Just time for a cream tea for those who were left (nice tea but the cream was stronger than the scones, leading to some scone fragmentation) before heading back to the unreality of the real world …….