A personal blog by me, Chris Sexton, about stuff I do, and stuff I'm interested in. Expect lots on folk, clog dancing, holidays, walks, science and my Dolls House!
Another weekend camping - at a Morris weekend in Evesham. The forecast was pretty bad,so we decided to go minimalist, Normally I like my mod cons when camping, but this time we decided to leave most stuff at home, and just take our small tent and a kettle! This tent goes up in about 5 mins and comes down in the same time, and we thought if it really was rainy and windy it would be easier to manage. We were camping on the Meadow in Evesham, right by the River Avon which was dangerously high when we got there having driven through torrential rain. A local helpfully told us it would it would flood the other way, first. So, tent pitched, we managed a sit outside and a civilised g and t before setting off to a local Indian for a curry. I was tying to follow a major upgrade going on at work and needed to keep my phone charged, so managed to sneak it into a plug in the restaurant. Stuart decided to wait until we got to the pub, and in the middle of an England football game managed to unplug the projector showing the game...
Evening spent in the gazebao, and a reasonably early night. Saturday wasn't too bad when we set off on our coach tours, and we managed to get some dancing in, between the showers.
The rain did stop us dancing outside at lunchtime and we had to be inventive and do a small dance in the pub.
In the afternoon we went to The Fleece, a beautiful national Trust pub, and when we got there it was throwing it down, so we sheltered with everyone else under a very wet gazebo.
But eventually it brightened up and we got to dance. In the evening we went for a chinese meal, and then sat in the gazebo again.
Sunday morning the sun was shining, and there were plenty of rowers out.
after a full cooked breakfast in the rowing club we got the small tent down, and gathered by the bandstand for dancing and then a procession. There were some serious hats on display.
And some interesting characters
The procession went up into town, where we all danced in the market square, and then the showers started. We managed to doge them for our first dance spot, but our last dance was by the church, and as we started, the heavens opened, and we danced in the pouring rain. Got drenched. But, we got a round of applause!
Great weekend.
Great weekend away with my dance team, Yorkshire Chandelier down in Northamptonshire. It was the weekend of dance organised by Queen's Oak and Rose and Castle. About 15 different dance teams, camping at a Rugby Club for a couple of nights, and dancing at various pubs and villages. Great fun, and brilliant weather.
Good food, good company and a fair amount of beer and wine. There's some lovely villages which we visited on a bus tour on Saturday. Saturday night a ceilidh in the pavilion, and on Sunday we went to Stoke Breune Canal museum - a great place to visit. After a boat trip along the canal, all teams took turns to dance alongside the locks, being careful not to get too close to the edge.
Good to be with our mates Sheffield City Morris again.
It's fairly obvious I'm into folk, and all things related to it, and that (especially if you know my twittername), I'm a clog dancer. I dance northwest clog morris with a team called Yorkshire Chandelier, and have been doing so for over 25 years! I get really p****d off with the national pastime of knocking our heritage and our traditions, when most other countries take great pride in them. We can all take a joke - and let's face it, if you admit to being a Morris Dancer you have to be able to :-) - but we should celebrate our folk heritage more. This weekend we had a great opportunity to when the National Morris Spectacular took place in Sheffield - about 50 teams of all different traditions danced all day around the city centre - I was pleased to be one of them, although I'm not sure my feet agreed with me at the end of the day. Here's some pictures, hopefully demonstrating the variety of different styles of morris.
And if after all that you want to see some really good, arty ones, Stuart has posted some here.
Another bright sunny day when I finally woke up, about half ten. Been really lucky with the weather this year. Shorts on every day, and only Monday rained. Shame it was Regatta Day.
Walked up to the Abbey, and got my favourite views out over Whitby Bay and the estuary of the River Esk. By now I'd remembered that I could take panorama shots with my camera .
Went in Whitby church, which always looks to me as though someone built a church then threw lots of different bits at it.
Really unusual inside, with lots of small enclosures which people sat in.
The posh ones have names on the doors, and some are labelled "for strangers only".
The pulpit has three tiers, and an ear trumpet as the wife of the vicar was deaf and she sat at the bottom with the tubes from the trumpets in her ears.
Walked down the 199 steps from the Abbey to the town and got more great views.
Stuart has a terrible habit of muttering random numbers as we go down, which really annoys the kids as they run up the steps counting them as they go up...
Just past the bottom of the steps is the kipper smoking house, much featured on various TV cooking programmes.
Caught a bit more dancing at the Bandstand, bumped into loads of friends as we wandered round, and then had my fourth Whitby fish for lunch. I've eaten so much fish my brain will be great, but am a bit worried about the waistline....
It was so sunny, I walked along the beach. It's a very traditional seaside beach, with deck chairs and wind breaks for hire, donkeys, ice cream, families building sand castles ( and a sand whale!), and playing cricket.
Friday afternoon is traditionally the workshop showcase where everyone who's been in a workshop during the week learning to play an instrument or learning a new dance tradition gets the chance to perform it in front of an audience. This year we went because my friend Rebekah had been in the clog workshop, learning some great Pat Tracy mixed rhythm steps. Here she is doing the Lancashire Irish ones.
Rapper is always a popular workshop, and this year was no exception, with Snark Rapper having about 8 sets up, some in fancy dress. At the end of the demo, they got all the teams to come together in one giant curly ( you need to be a rapper dancer to understand that). And it was followed by some big multiple locks, some worked, some took longer!
Then the final procession led by the Whitby Garland made with local heather, collected from the moors on Thursday. Traditionally carried by a sword team, this year it was Snark's turn.
Also traditional for them to drink a glass of beer in all the pubs they go past. Glad to say they managed it.
We regrouped back at the cottage and cooked a great fish pie (more fish, even had crab as a starter). Thought we'd better try and drink what we'd got left, before packing the cars tomorrow morning, after all, don't want to take any home do we? Sat around for a while then walked up for a final pint at The Elsinore, then to the final ceilidh. Martin Harvey calling and Hekety playing, a great way to finish. By midnight all of the other events have finished and everyone piles into the Spa. The dance floor is rocking and bar packed. Finished with The Willow Tree again, and then everyone comes in for the closing ceremony.
The garland is paraded in
and then guarded by the attendant team, as the company, led by Will Noble, sings Wild Mountain Thyme:
Then, the garland is dismantled by the team and everyone gets a piece of heather as a symbol of good luck and peace, and to make sure you return next year. Now everyone waits patiently for their piece:
Up until about 15 years ago the garland was suspended in the ceiling, and then lowered, and there was a free for all!
Here's me with my heather, not looking as if I've drunk too much at all!
I spent Wednesday afternoon at a concert, the 422 Extravaganza. An excellent concert, full of young musicians, don't think any were older than 30 and some much younger. We got the chance to see the excellent Raj Raj Raj again:
as well as 422, who I've not seen doing a concert for ages, as they've been on a lot here but mainly playing for ceilidhs. Aren't Sophie Ball's shoes wonderful?
Then another Whitby quiz, this time Family Folktunes, loosely based on Family Fortunes with two folk families, The Unthanks and The Prices competing, hosted again by the great Stanley Accrington. Last time I saw Rachel Unthank it was on the BBC Best of Glastonbury programme, so she's quite famous now, but there's no standing in ceremony in Whitby. They'd asked 100 folkies answers to questions ranging from what's your favourite folk festival to what might you do in a concert (interestingly the top answer to that one was sleep!).
As we wanted to get into another concert and knew it would fill up fast we only had 20 minutes to get something to eat, so the answer was obvious - fish and chips eaten on the move. I didn't dare tell the rest that's what Id had for lunch.... But you can't beat Whitby fish, freshly caught. Most chip shops even tell you which trawler it came in on that morning.
The concert was the highlight of the festival so far for me - an Old Time Music Hall. Lots of acts all doing shortish spots, all of the right period. John Kirkpatrick set then scene with an opening sone entitled " What noise annoys an oyster", and it sort of went downhill from there....
John Cocking told some excellent monologues, including one about the Ramsbottoms, which you have to have in any music hall show. This was The Recumbent Posture, made famous by Stanley Holloway. You can find the lyrics here, but they have to be said in the right accent!
Keith Donnelly told his normal mixture of funny stories ( my favourite being villages with names where you wouldn't want to be in their women's institute including Ugly and Loose) and sang some funny songs including an audience participation one which had us all waving our arms in the air pretending to be God ( he moves in mysterious ways....)
Camden Clog did a clog routine including a sailors hornpipe and some wonderful Lancashire Irish steps which I've never been able to master. The video below is just of the Hornpipe steps:
Various other music hall songs including the Galloping Major and the Man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo, which had everyone belting out the choruses, and then it was the final act, Stanley Accrington. he is one of the funniest people I know, writing his own songs. Some of them remarkably up to date including references to things that had happened in the last couple of days. A whole song dedicated to Folk Week clashing with the Regatta for example. But the best, and for me containing the best line of the festival, was one made up of opening lines or titles of country songs. "Take your tongue out of my mouth cos I'm kissing you goodbye". I had to look it up as I didn't believe it, but it was apparently written by John Denver!
Then we all piled down to the Late Night Extra, and ended up staying till the end again, and getting a few dances in.
middle of an England football game managed to unplug the projector showing the game...
