Wakefield Morris Diary 2003

March

8th St. Michaels East Ardsley. Dance out to support a Yorkshire Cancer Research event. Display and workshop. 7.30pm Interesting night out for a good cause. Ken the postie's secret life as a Morris dancer is now out amongst the good folk of East Ardsley.

22nd The Date & Fig Fair at the Stanford Arms, Windle Edge, Dunford Bridge, Penistone. From 12:30. Its an odd address but I'm sure we will find it! Hosted by the Fezheads.
Well we found it - and what a great piece of Yorkshire it proved to be on a beautiful spring day. A curious event but one not to be missed. Where will the sons of the desert set up their caravans next year?

29th Darlington Spring Thing. 10.30am to 3.00pm(ish). Amazingly good weather!

April


May

2-5th Moor and Coast Festival in Whitby. Dancing Saturday and Sunday. And a grand time was had by all. Nice to see so many young teams around and a really good dance from The Maltby Phoenix team (longsword with a Belgian influence - Oh to be young and devil may care once more!). And we got a piccy in the Whitby Gazette so we are just as pleased as pleased can be. Do it again next year?

June

14th Horbury Street Fayre. We usually limit ourselves to just the one day here - too much of a good thing etc. But not a bad idea to give our home base a chance to see the dances from the "Horbury Suite".

*16th The Greyhound at Saxton - nice pub, nice people, a regular treat.

20th-22nd with Three Spires Morris at Lichfield Folk Festival. Interesting weekend - and what a pretty town or should that be city?

#23rd Practise night at the Brewers Pride Ossett.

27th-29th Invite to Argameles weekend of dance. Never got there.
And also to Scarborough Morris Festival. Or here.

*30th The Chequers at Ledsham. Another regular favourite. We got rained off but some of us turned up just in case it let up! As Ken pointed out "Fantastic, didn't put a foot wrong all night".

July

5th Westerton Primary School Tingley. Summer gala 2.00pm-4.00pm. I think I now know as much as I will ever want to about Tae-Kwando or what ever the lads in pyjamas were demonstrating.

#7th Practise night at the Brewers Pride Ossett.

12th St. Johns School Wakefield. Talk about hot - and guest callers as Doug went AWOL to rescue the in-laws.

13th Pennine Camphill Community, Chaplethorpe. A regular spot to support a good cause. Still a good event and still very hot.

*14th The Anglers Retreat Wintersett.

18th-20th Fylde Coast Weekend at Lytham St. Annes. Sunday in Fleetwood and we don't have the Fleetwood dance in the current repetoire - sorry Chris.

#21st Practise night at the Brewers Pride Ossett. The last casual practice at my favourite pub for 2003. Thanks to Jo, Sally and Matt for the use of the yard. See you next year? That's the team of course - I'll see you every Thursday as usual for the session.

25th-27th Warwick Folk Festival. Yippee our favourite festival! Well the rain did dampen things a bit but hey only for the Saturday barbeque and who needs food anyway? Good dance spots, good teams, good organisation what more could a team ask for?

The team would like to apologise to Dick Dixon & Co. for the rain at the 2003 festival. They have pointed out that the dance master's constant reference to "the sun always shines at Warwick" was the probable cause as the dance master is usually to blame for everything. The dance master would like to point out that the dance display compere's reference to the team as "one of the most disciplined around" obviously shows that he's never tried running a practice night with them! The team are fun people but disciplined is way down the list of adjectives used by the dance master.

*28th The Kings Arms on Heath Common. After the rigours of Warwick we still managed a creditable display - and heck it rained again!

August

2nd Phil and Pams 25th Wedding Anniversary bash. We get to dance for our supper! We did dance and thanks to Phil and Pam for a splendid feed and hospitality.

4th Now this is odd - almost - we have done this before, well not the same couple obviously. We dance at a wedding celebration. Walton Hall 6.00 pm - 7.30 pm. Lovely setting for a wedding and we hope our contribution was a memorable addition to the celebrations. Our thanks to the nice chap who bought the team a beer.

8th-15th Broadstairs Folk Festival. We got rain at Warwick and sun by the bucket at Broadstairs. The hottest day since records began and we were dancing! But we survived to dance again for two more days. Someone called us disciplined - again - I must get the dictionary out - maybe the definition of the word has changed. Nice to meet up with old friends and faces from the Sweeps Festival at Rochester again thanks to Bishop Gundulph's for letting us jump the running order at our joint spot so we could rehearse the dance we did at the bandstand later on that day. If anyone out there knows what Mortimers are on let me know - their energy levels are not normal in that heat. Nice to get Will back from France - eventually. The torch lit procession was amazing - I say "OK it's hot, it's dark, the surface is probably duff so we'll walk a lot". The team see the crowd and say "Hey let's dance". Is this the disciplined team I keep hearing about?

Artistes -v- dancers? Our final bandstand spot was in "fluid" mode because an artiste had failed to make it on time. My apologies to the poor guy who asked if we could fill in with an extra spot, to cover for the still absent artiste - after we had finished and de-rigged. The abrupt "No" was possibly a tad sharp. The 30 minute wait for the mini bus back to the camp site following this was fun in the sun and finding the delay was down to an artiste who had asked if the driver would mind going off route for something they had forgotten was nice. The arrival of a band of artistes who wanted to share our mini bus back to their hotel - well given the delay it could be argued it was their mini bus was also nice. Loading the bus with instruments, artistes and dancers took a while. Finding the hotel was all of 200 yards from the bandstand caused Malcom and myself to suffer "button lip" syndrome in a big way. My cap going missing between the bandstand and the campsite just put the cherry on the cake.

The rest of August we're on our holidays.

29th - 31st Invited to Milltown Cloggies weekend but we could not raise a team - see above.


September

1st Yes team this is the first Monday in September so we are back in the hall for practice nights.

6th-7th Sowerby Bridge Rushbearing. So we did Sowerby and it only rained a little bit. The year the Ring O'Belles danced and it really rained lives on in folklore. Any rushbearing badge from 87 that is'nt curled up at the edges from the downpour is a fake apparently! Good to see the cart pullers in action again and get a feel for a real community spirit - if only I could work out how to get to the bar before they do it would be really wonderful.

14th - The boathouse at Newmillerdam. 2.00 pm to 4.00 pm. Wonder if there is a decent dance spot yet? No there's not. But the weather was good and we met some pleasant people - so that's all right then.

20th - Rainbow Morris day of dance was a success - we think. Lots of people in Saltaire and some intersesting dance spots. Between the bells and Pulse radio, picking out the music for the dance was a challenge at times. Our thanks to Bev and the ladies for a good day out. Our apologies for cutting and running after out last display - we could see the rain coming! Also thanks to the visitors and locals who took a moment or two to watch the dancing. Given some of the reactions of other residents I'm just waiting for the "Look North" item where someone complains about the noise of the newly installed bells!

26th-28th Morris Federation AGM at Much Wenlock. We did do an AGM - once - but not this year. Though our former dance master Tefor Owen was bidding for the presidency. Did he succeed? Yes he did. Congratulations Trefor.

October
11th 8.00pm Invite to do a spot at the East Ardsley Conservative Club as part of a Wakefield Hospice fund raiser. For some of us a moral choice that's between a rock and a hard place. Moral dilemma solved. Unable to get firm details of what and when we scrubbed the event off the list!

November
10th - 8.00pm The teams annual general meeting. One not to miss as we discuss the state of the world with specific reference to Wakefield Morris.

********** Down to the future Up to the past **********

December

26th Boxing Day at the Kings Arms, Heath Common. 12.30 pm

NOTES:
*
# The Brewers Pride practice nights are informal. So we will NOT be in the full regalia (note for musicians - "regalia" thats a posh word for kit). The aim is to have a relaxed evening brushing up on the finer points of the dance whilst enjoying a pleasant social evening and saving a few bob on the hall hire whilst hopefully attracting some recruits!

Back to Home Page " "2002 " "2004"