The weekend before last, we had a day trip to Chichester for a Day of Dance. We'd intended to go by train from Southampton, but then they announced a train strike. Pellinor keeps a car on the mainland, so the choices were, A, drive there and back, with him having No Beer! at a Morris event! :-O B, go with the rest of the side on an epic journey ( Read more... )

On Friday, we headed off to Guernsey for a long weekend of Morris dancing and merriment. Starting from the island as we were, flying (from Southampton) turned out to be not just the quickest but the cheapest option, so that's what we did, flying after work on Friday. The flight was brief, with barely enough time for the cabin crew to whizz down the ( Read more... )

Instead of going away to folk festivals, our mixed dance group has developed the tradition of going somewhere random and pretty and inviting ourselves to local fetes and the like - having okayed it with local dance sides, of course. (Turning up out of the blue and dancing on someone else's territory is Not On, and might lead to quiet tutting over a ( Read more... )

Well, that was a rare occurrence: a May morning in which we actually saw the sun, rather than one in which we peered at our rain-sodden watches, decided that the sun was probably up somewhere far behind the clouds, and hurried off to the pub for breakfast. There were actual Real People there watching, too, despite it being a work day ( Read more... )

We spent most of today at a Morris dance workshop, held in a local scout hut. Presented with four walls covered with notices, posters and instructional leaflets, naturally I set about reading absolutely every word of every single one of them, and I was intrigued to see that one of the scout group's forthcoming meetings was "backwards cooking ( Read more... )

A couple of weeks ago, I was speculating about the apartments for over 50s with a nautical twist, and wondering what was this nautical twist that all applicants had to demonstrate.

I have now written a dance called Nautical Twist. It is danced to the Captain Pugwash theme tune. :-D

I was due to dance in Romsey on Saturday, so we decided to stay over and make a weekend of it, adding in a couple of walks through some of the settings of Watership Down.

( Photos of things, including yarn bombing, monsters, willow microbes, no rabbits, many sheep and some fish )

We spent most of Sunday at an intensive Morris dancing workshop: many hours of virtually non-stop dancing, much of it involving jumping and leaping. By the end, my muscles felt like limp spaghetti, and my left calf in particularly was particularly painful and shaky. Sunday was also one of our scheduled running days ( Read more... )

We were asked to dance at a firework display last night, down on the seafront in Sandown. I don't think I've been to a Bonfire Night firework display since I was... ooh, 9 or 10 years old, when, armed with bags of Bonfire Toffee (which meant black treacle toffee in my house, although to others it's cinder toffee) we headed out to a Field of Mystery ( Read more... )

Pellinor's away LARPing all weekend, so the house held no Morris man who was duty bound to get up before dawn to dance in the summer. I decided to head out and watch the dancing, anyway. The plan was that I would join them for their post-dancing cooked breakfast, then go on a nice long walk out in West Wight, and be home by lunch. Most of this plan ( Read more... )