August - With bells on

Another month, another festival, another dance.

Here I am in the surprisingly sunny hills of the Brecon Beacons. The bruised skies above keep threatening downpours & I’m living on meteorological tenterhooks.

Contrarily dressed in sunglasses and wellies (& thankfully something in between) I’m up with the crows watching dawn break over the impending view. Technically speaking I’m not actually up with the crows; I was in fact out with the owls all night & have a giddy tiredness now to prove it. But I intend to stay up a little bit longer purely to watch the Morris Dancing workshop that is about to take place in the children’s area. 

When I embarked on this resolute project at the beginning of the year Morris dancing was at the very top of my list. But way back in January it seemed an utter impossibility. You don’t get your fair share of dance classes with sticks and hankies in London. For once fate is on my side.

I’m a sucker for anything echoing a folkloric past. I’m a sucker for any activity that can be combined with a nice pint of ale. So I bound over to the approaching group of dancers to see if I can have a go at waving a hankie with them. I find their leader. He’s the one with the tallest top hat, adorned with the most feathers & skulls & jingly bells & bottle tops. He hears my crashdance plea & the whole group kindly oblige to give myself & a roped-in friend our own public one-to-one crash-class.

The leader takes off his hat, his homemade purple tasselled mumming cloak & hands them to me to put on. They feel like lead armour. Finally I am handed a wooden truncheon. It looks like it could do some uncoordinated damage. I pity my dance partner & wonder why they didn’t start me off with a less threatening foolproof hankie.

And so with the sound of an accordion and the rhythm of a booted rhythm stick the dance begins. There’s a clacking of truncheons and a jingling of bells & fortunately for me & my patient dance partner I don’t manage GBH once. We are taught the dance sequence in simple sections, Then before you know it if we’ve got the whole sequence under our belts and hats and cloaks & finish the routine with a war-like cry as we raise our sticks above our heads.

Just an average Sunday.

And now for that pint of ale.

(with thanks to the Chepstow dance troop)