That marked the end of the main dance season, so the next event was the annual Bunfight on 29th November, this year featuring the excellent Steamchicken as band, together with by now our regular Bunfight caller Nick Walden. This year’s theme was ‘Comics’, which gave plenty of scope for some broad interpretation. It turned out to be another super-heroic evening, with a fine display of costumes on show, some reaching new heights (or widths) of impracticality. Interval entertainments included the as yet unnamed triangular stick dance, the now traditional Irish Bingo, and then later on the Men in Coloured Ties, who injected some sartorial elegance as well as a spot that left the audience bemused and entertained in equal measure. And any resemblance of the spot to one of the routines of the Japanese group ‘World Order’ was in the end fairly coincidental.
The next day, Sunday 30th, was the Wokingham Winter Carnival, with the theme of ‘The Magic of the Movies’, and once again the weather was kind to the event, being mild with patches of sunshine. Along with 3 other local teams plus Fools Gambit we had a good dancing day in the 2 dance locations, outside Boots and further down Denmark Street. The day was particularly notable however for our participation in the procession. Earlier in 2014, the film actor George Clooney had bought a house in Sonning along with his new wife Amal. Being almost local, we therefore thought that it would be nice if he could attend the Wokingham Winter Carnival, particularly with the year’s ‘Movie’ theme. Since he seemed unlikely to attend in the flesh, we therefore arranged the best lookalike we could find to take part in the procession. And so it was that Paul as George, Tim as Amal, and John as their chauffeur in his appropriate looking black Mercedes duly paraded around town, flanked by the rest of BB in Men in Black dark suits and sunglasses as minders. John looked every inch the perfect chauffeur, with appropriate hat and earpiece, Tim looked every inch the perfect wife in a fully authentic outfit plus dark wig, and Paul looked as many inches as he could (helped by a booster seat) leaning out the rear window of the car with his coffee cup, in homage to the real George’s recent coffee adverts on TV. It seems unlikely we actually fooled anyone, but a few people did find it amusing – which was good enough for us!
