This section of the site contains items of interest about the activities of the side. These may be simple reports, interesting pictures received, or illustrated accounts of recent dance outs and/or festivals.
After a while, of course, most of these news items will become out of date. The majority of the old material will then be deleted, but some, the more significant items, will be moved to the archive section, shown below.
Report by Pam Burrows
On Saturday 7th August 2010 we made our way to Wickham, following the signs to the festival car park, which we then discovered was nearly a mile by road from our first dance spot. Luckily, it was all downhill and we had allowed plenty of time!
The first spot happened to be at the Kings Head in Wickham Square, where some of us managed to obtain refreshments beforehand, and we joined Sompting Village Morris, who had two sides - ladies and men - meaning we had to do only 1 in 3 turns. Despite this, some of us still couldn't get out there on time!! We had to dodge the Bluestar line bus and several shoppers in their cars, but the threatening rain kept off and, as Bob had told us it was only going to rain between one and two o clock, we thought we were home and dry for the rest of the day.
The second spot - outside Green's wine bar - saw us joined by the magnificent Dead Horse Morris (pictured on the left), who had been our guests on the previous Tuesday at the Green Dragon in Brook. They also boasted 2 sides, men and ladies, and used their voices as their main music. Luckily, we were under a large tree, which came in handy when the heavens opened, at least for the musicians! Unfortunately, Sue J, who has now experienced her third and hopefully last injury, was attacked by a wasp down her shirt and had to dash in to the Chemist for Waspeze.
As our third spot was at Scats and at this point it was hammering down with rain, we concluded that no one would be watching and the bar of the Kings Head was suggested as an alternative venue. However, the rain didn't last and after about 10 minutes we made our way to Scats, where Borderline (shown on the right) were waiting for us to arrive. This was a good practice spot as no one did watch - indeed we joined in with Borderline at the end to do a dance that they had taught some of us 15 months ago, and had great fun getting the sticking completely wrong.
At this point we had to make our way back to the arena (half a mile away on foot and uphill) and so slowly, at least the older ones, it took about half an hour to get there. This was more like it - the sun came out and we actually had a bit of an audience, albeit those waiting for the Punch and Judy show. We put on an excellent performance together with Knockhundred Shuttles, despite having been on our feet for 4 hours and no lunch break! Shows what stamina morris dancers have!!
Our reward after we had finished for the day was for the drinkers to visit the Festival Beer Tent, the optimists sitting outside as the heavens opened once again. It didn't dampen our spirits though!! Photo on right courtesy of Sue S's phone. Pete is well camouflaged too as he can hardly be seen. We listened to some of the Festival music, in particular The Men They Couldn't Hang, to which Doug commented 'what a shame'. They were quite good, but loud, and as there didn't appear to be much in the Folk Genre, after a couple of pints were made our way home, tired but happy!
