The Cheerful Insanity of Me

Gogs are dancing out in the villages around Ely on Saturday as part of Ouse Washes' Day of Dance (lots and lots of molly)

We're going to be at

11.00 - The Cutter, Ely
12.00 - off to The Plough, Little Downham
1.15 - down the road to The Anchor, Little Downham
2.30 - off to Five Miles, Upware where we dance until about 4.30.

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(Direct link)

Yay! I like it when random videos of us appear on youtube, especially when they're of dances that seem to have gone well :-)

It's always odd seeing yourself on film. I'd never noticed how similar my hat was to the ears of a spaniel before and those shoe laces really are scarily pink.

Gog Magog Molly - Bunkfest 200918
Originally uploaded by dr syntax

It was interesting returning to Wallingford this weekend with Gogs. Last time I was there was 2006, the year before it collapsed due to funding issues, but it's nice to see the organisers have managed to pull the festival back together out of nowhere.

There were less sides around then before which was a shame. They don't offer as much for performing sides anymore though. The ceilidhs used to be free for us, but now they're only half price (except if your doing the interval spot when they're free).

I know a number of people who object to being invited to perform at a festival and then having to pay to see the rest of the festival when we've given our time for free. I can see there point, especially with places like Chippenham when they work you really hard for 2 days and still charge you £30 or £40 for the priviledge or work you really hard for 3 days a leave you no time to see any of the rest of the festival. However, it seems somehow different with Wallingford, as given the funding issues, I'm guessing it's more an issue of charging or the festival wouldn't run.

I do wonder whether this could have been releaved more by having more collectors out with the dance sides or encourage the dance sides themselves to collect. Helen and I were discussing this on the way back to the campsite on Sunday afternoon and wondered whether a prize for the side that collects the most like Ely has would help.

In terms of our performances, they seemed to go well, we even got a scream for "more" at the end of our ceilidh spot, which was cool :-)

There's some good photos of us dancing on Sunday here (including the feet at the top of the post)

As for other sides, Beltane were impressive (probably helped quite a bit by the power of their music), I especially liked the way they used pauses within one of their dances with all the dancers and musicians stopping until one of the dancers resumed the beat by hitting the ground with their stick. I personally felt they repeated things a bit too much though and lost some of their impact as a result. The pausing for example was wow the first couple of times, but after that it wasn't as unexpected.

Wicket Brood had a lot of power and interesting dances. They'd been given the other ceilidh spot and certainly made a lot of impact. They lost audience attention between dances as the forming of the sets seemed a little disorganised, but as soon as they started dancing again they got it back.

I was also impressed with the performances from the Heneghan/James and O'Gara Schools of Irish Dance. It was the Sunday performance I saw, and given how young some of them were I was impressed with the amount of confidence they had. Given how showy the Irish stuff is, it can look fairly rubbish without that and most of the child sides I've seen doing it have always seemed incredibly nervous, so it was nice to see this for a change.

Borderline (the brightly coloured ones rather than this lot who I've not seen yet) seem fun. I'd seen them a Chepstow, where they'd seen a bit of fun, but they seemed to have more energy here which meant they made more of an impact. Very different from most border, but it seems that when they're on form they're very dramatic. Probably worth keeping an eye out for them to see how they develop.

As for the ceilidhs, I didn't get to much of Climax Ceilidh Band on Friday night due to rehersing the interval spot and running off to see Warblefly, but they're normally good and the last dance was good. Toothless Mary on Saturday were excellent with endless supplies of energy, there were a few issues with people not being able to hear the caller over them, but people seemed to generally be having fun, so not a major problem. All in all, the ceilidhs were less well attended then the used to be (but then they used to be free to the Morris sides and their used to be more sides there, so perhaps that's only to be expected). Friday's seemed particularly empty, whereas Saturday's was probably a reasonable number of people given the space (it used to be overcrowded).

Didn't see many of the concerts, although Baka Beyond on Sunday evening were good. They had an interesting blend of celtic and african folk. However, the real highlight of the festival were Warblefly who, if anything, were even better than at Broadstairs. I got a copy of their latest CD, so they're be more about them soon, but for the curious have a link to their myspace profile.

All in all Wallingford is still one of the best of the smaller festivals and lot less tiring when you only dance with one side there.

...but from a modern perspective, this cropped up on the Gogs mailing list today:

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It's a tune we dance to, but not generally played quite like that.

I've been to Ely loads of times with Gogs now, but I think this year has to have been the best one I've done with them. The side seems to have somewhat mellowed in the past few years and they're all a bit more laid back about dance outs. This has got to be a good thing as it's much more fun without everyone stressing around you.

Called another procession for Gogs, which I thought went ok, but I'm not sure the rest of the side agrees with me on that one. My general thoughts were to spot where the largest congregations of the audience were along the route and, as long as the side in front weren't too far away at that point, do the figures there. After all, the whole point of the procession is for the dance sides to display themselves to the audience (ok, that didn't quite come out as I meant it, but I'll leave it there anyway just to inflict you with the mental image). However, given the amount of complaints they gave me afterwards, Gogs don't want to do it like that. Oh well *shrugs*, might be better if I don't do another one then.

Other than that it went quite well, we had 2 good spots, one outside the Cathedral and one on the High Street, which got us reasonable audiences. I often wonder if they could find a better spot then outside the Oliver Cromwell house though, as there never seems to be any audience when we've danced there, but I suppose they need a certain number of spots to accomodate all the teams and can't have them all in the city centre. The last spot got a bit disorganised because of the packing up of the market and the fact that it had been moved earlier in the day as it was supposed to be in the middle of a main road (clearly the organisers must have got a bit fed up of all the faff of dealing with Morris Dancers)! However, that basically just meant the last spot finished early, so it wasn't much of a problem.

A few of us stayed for the evening concerts afterwards. Given the number of years we've been going, it seems strange that we haven't all done this before (Helen and Ruth have, but generally people go up for the day and come back). Very tempted to see about going up for the whole weekend next year and camp even if we only dance on the Saturday again.

( Quick review of the concert acts in the order I saw them )

Generally a good line-up. It seems a shame I've never thought to look at what happens at Ely in the evenings before, but at least I had it suggested to me this time.

Yesterday was fun.

Was a bit worrying at first when at 10.05 I seemed to be the only Gog there 10 minutes before the procession. Hoddeston offered me a kazoo, so I could process on my own though. The rest of the side arrived shortly after that though, so I didn't have to resort to that.

It was the first time they'd asked me to call a procession, which was quite fun and seemed to go reasonably well (we didn't have a lot of music, so it was a little difficult to hear). Not sure what the rest of the side thought of it, but I was fairly happy with my calling for it. We seemed to keep a fairly consistent distance from the team in front, did a reasonable number of figures where there were large bunches of audience and they all seemed to hear me ok.

We did our spot in the main display, which seemed to go ok. It was a bit of a shame that the audience had thinned out a bit by then though (then again, that will partially be the sides earlier in the display disappearing off and it's difficult to maintain interest of shoppers for 9 dances).

The rest of the afternoon was a fairly relaxed affair going around with Bedfordshire Lace and St Alban's Morris Men. The spots were only 30 minutes, so we got about 3 dances at each. I wasn't convinced by some of the spots as Christopher Place and especially outside the Cathedral seemed to be away from the crowds (there was pretty much literally no-one but us at the latter), but then there are limits on where you would be allowed to dance and the market was taking up most of the main shopping area in the city centre.

Had lunch between the displays and the first spot, so during the actual lunchbreak I ran off to the amazing tea shop next to tourist information, which morganmuffle has introduced me to when I went up there in May, and dragged half of Molly with me. Actually, I think I managed to drag all of Molly, but only half stayed for tea, the other half opting for the pub instead (admittedly a difficult choice).

Turns out it's a really good thing to post details of where we'll be dancing on here, as jinglebellafeed turned up at the Cathedral spot bearing many ice-lollies. If you ever want to know how to make molly dancers happy that's a good way of doing it *subtle hint for anyone else reading this*

We only did one dance at the last spot, as people had to run off, but it was quite interesting to see Wicket Brood doing a version of the Mississippi Mud Dance (one we nicked ourselves from Ouse Washes), but with Sticks in Border Style.

To make things even better the weather remained hot and sunny until we finished dancing and only then did it start the thunderstorm :-)

Stomp were amazing as ever in the evening.

All in all a good day and I seemed to have endless amounts of energy. Still seemed to have plenty left after the whole day of dancing, plus the 4.5 mile walk back home from St Pancras. Think I must be getting fitter again, which has got to be a good thing given I was feeling a bit unfit dancing back in April.

Feeling more tired today, but it's more "lack of sleep" tired rather than "lots of dancing" tired, which also makes sense as I can only have got around 5 hours of Friday night and didn't get home and to bed until about 3 am last night.

Rounded off the weekend with a trip around the Tower with miriammoules today, which was nice. Once again, managed to escape without having my head cut off, which has also got to be a good thing.

There seems to be a thing going round facebook at the moment with people listing what they're thankful for each day for a month, perhaps I should just be thankful for not having my head cut off each day for a month... That is rather reliant on me not having my head cut off though, so I guess as I can't tell the future I'll leave it, especially given Thrales will probably make attempts on it. *crosses fingers and acquires large amounts of duct tap just in case*

Then again, perhaps I'd get a sainthood the same as Alban did for having his cut off? Do you think they'll mind that I'm not Christian like he was?

NEXT TIME ON THE WEEKEND LIFE OF A hmmm_tea: Touring the Borough with Thrales on Friday, followed with being at Paddington at 7.45 am on Saturday morning (ouch!) to go off to Chepstow for the weekend dancing with Wild Hunt.

On Saturday Molly are off to sunny St Albans to dance as part of the festival there (link to details of the more folk related things).

In a rather uncharacteristic form of organisation I even know where we're going to be dancing (mainly because Helen sent out the details to all of us ages ago rather than because I did anything to make myself organised).

The day looks to be somewhat as follows:

• 10.15 am Procession from Bricket Rd car park to the High St via Hatfield Rd & St Peters St & Chequers St


• 11.15 am - 12.45 pm Mass display in the high street (we're 9th out of 13 in the running order)


• 1.00 pm - 1.30 pm Dancing by the Clock Tower


• 2.45 pm - 3.15 pm Dancing in Christopher Place


• 3.30 pm - 4.00 pm Dancing by the West Door of the Abbey


• 4.15 pm - 5.00 pm Dancing at the Fighting Cocks

For the first three afternoon spots we will be going around with Bedfordshire Lace and St Albans Morris Men (while the other sides distribute off around the town) and then we're with all the other sides again for the last spot.

Then we get to round the whole day off by going to the Stomp ceilidh in the evening (just to ceilidh, not to perform).

Was just looking at my diary to arrange something and noticed the following:

6 June - Molly: St Neots
12 June - Thrales: Tour
14 June - Wild Hunt: Nutfield
21 June - Wild Hunt: Angmering
27 June - Molly: St Albans
3 July - Thrales: Tour
4-5 July - Wild Hunt: Chepstow
11 July - Molly: Ely
19 July - Wild Hunt: Peckham

That's a dance out every weekend up until 25 July!

Perhaps I need to learn to say "no"? On the other hand it will be fun :-)

Since I finished grow, my eye prescription has basically stayed stable (as would be expected) and, according to the last optician I saw, with my glasses I have average sight in my right eye and well above average sight in my left. Without them I could make a reasonable attempt at reading a book at arms length with my left eye (I'm long sighted so it's up close that causes issues), but struggle to get a clear image of the other side of the room with my right. As a result I'm very left eye dominant and apparently don't use my right one very much at all.

I, therefore, got somewhat paranoid that this had change significantly last night when asked to mirror someone on the other side of the set. Not unusual in itself, as we're always watching where each other is out the corner of our eyes to keep lines straight, etc (well, in theory at least). However, when at the end of practice yesterday I was asked this person on the other side of the set, I found that although he could see me, I couldn't see him. It seemed strange at the time, because being further away should have made him easier to see.

So, being utterly paranoid at this time, I argued a bit about where I was aiming to be and didn't admit to not being able to see him, in a most thoroughly unhelpful way.

It was only on the train back that I thought about it and realised that mostly when we're lining up we have people on both sides of us or at some point we turn around and end up on the other side. In the dance in question last night, we were going clockwise around a circle, which would have put him right in the corner of the bad eye that I don't use very much.

I wonder if I'm generally better a lining up with people on my left rather than those on my right? It's not something I've really considered before.

Not exactly helpful for this, but at least it would mean my eyesight is fine, which in all other respect it seems to be. Oh well, guess I'll just have to carry on just trying to know where I should be and aiming for that (and just correct where this is accordingly).

So, having just got back from DERT, 2 week's later, it's probably about time I finished posting about IVFDF

Saturday Workshops

( cajun, appellachian and dancing in wheelchairs )

Saturday Evening

( Fiddlegang and the Committee Band (briefly) )

Sunday

( Salsa, survivors ceilidh and aimless wondering around Exeter )

Overall Summary

It was generally a good festival this year.

If I was going to make one criticism, I would just say it was a shame Richard Mason was chairing again (his 5th time). Although, I'm sure his input must have been very valuable given his experience, it would have somehow been nicer if he'd taken a more backseat advisory role and let someone else have a go. I think one of the best things about IVFDF is how it offers the chance for anyone to gain experience of running it if they're part of a student folk group able to take it on.

Admittedly this will have happened anyway, as there will have been a number of other people on the committee and helping the committee who wouldn't even have been around last time it was in Exeter in 2004 (let alone the other 3 times he's chaired it), but given the size of Exeter FolkSoc, I can't help but feel that there must have been someone else both capable and willing to take on the overall driving seat. Then again, I've really no idea what went on and for all I know they could have twisted Richard Mason's arm into doing it.