The Cheerful Insanity of Me

Thrales are out on Friday, in Westminster from 8pm.

Rough itinerary:

• Marquis de Granby
• Royal Oak
• Strutton Arms
• The Albert (tbc)
• Slug and Lettuce
• The Speaker (tbc)
• The Old Rose (tbc)
• The Barley Mow (tbc)
• The White Horse and Bower (tbc)
• Westminster
• The White Swan (tbc)
• The Morpeth Arms (tbc)

Map
Facebook event

As if last weekend was not enough. Thrales are out again on Friday. This time on the Isle of Dogs.

We're meeting at the Henry Addington, MacKenzie Walk at 7.30 for an 8pm start. Then going on to:

City Pride, Westferry Road
The Rogue Trader, Westferry Road
The Fine Line, Fishermans Walk
1802 Museum of Docklands

...and whereever else we can find

Also on facebook, although there's not any more detail there.

Thrales will be dancing out in Clerkenwell tomorrow evening.

The plan is to meet at 7.30 at the Castle to dance at 8pm then tour as follows:

The Castle, Cowcross Street (dance tbc)
The Green, Clerkenwell Green
The Crown, Clerkenwell Green (dance tbc)
The Three Kings, Clerkenwell Close (dance tbc)
The City Pride, Farringdon Lane
The Betsy Trotwood, Farringdon Road (dance tbc)
The Coach and Horses, Ray Street (dance tbc)
The Exmouth Arms, Exmouth Market (at least I think that's the one he means)
The Easton, Easton Street (dance tbc)
The Peasant, St John Street

and then onto... Farringdon or Angel time permitting.

In other news, for those of you I haven't already told a thousand times on Facebook or Twitter. Thrales are now on Facebook at facebook.com/thrales (the tour is also on there as an event here, but doesn't have as nice a url)

Blackheath are also dancing out this weekend (details to follow once I figure out what's happening).

So, last week Pete told me it was going to be his last practice this week, so I emailed everyone in the side to say we'd have a short practice go to the pub early and that it would be nice if people associated with the side who doesn't regularly come to practice met us there.

When I saw him in the evening at Ely, it turned out he was going to be able to make 2 practices, so I sent a quick email around to tell everyone it had been postponed by a week when I got back Sunday. However, it turns out it was his last practice tonight after all, but we didn't find out until the end of the evening, so we didn't finish early. Luckily dancin_dan and I had bought a card in Ely before during the day and it had made it's way to practice, so it could quickly go around everyone as we left for the pub.

Not quite as planned, but a brilliant example of organisation Thrales style.

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.

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 :-)

So, we've danced in some really odd places, but Bourne and Hollingsworth must be one of the most bizarre bars I've ever visited.

As Time Out, so aptly put it, it's "not so much a bar as a reproduction of your granny's sitting room"

You've just got to love a bar where the DJ plays this as soon as you finish dancing:

[Error: unknown template video]

It was Thrales' AGM this evening, which means I'm no longer secretary (yay!), but now appear to be foreman.

OK, it's not a complete surprise as Andy had hinted that I would be good at it a few times over the past few months, but it's still nice to have everyone say they wanted me to do it (except one person, but when Andy mentioned it I felt this person wouldn't be happy with the idea, so that wasn't much of a surprise either. The main upshot of which was I was asked not to be a "stalinist dictator" - ???!).

Also told Thrales I wouldn't be going to DART (Dancing America Rapper Tournament - like DERT but the other side of the pond and in the Autumn next year), as I'm not comfortable with the idea of taking a flight I could choose not to for the obvious climate reasons. I don't have any objection to the rest of the side going though and they could well have a side without me for it, which is good as it means its a personal thing, that means whilst the rest of the group know my views on the flights they're not forced to go along with them.

So, last night's tour was bizarre, but cool.

We went down well in the first few pubs (especially the Blackfriar - I love that place we went down really well last time we were there as well)

It was when we were passing the Young Vic that someone had the idea that we should ask if we could do a dance in the bar there. They said yes, so I can now claim to have performed at the Young Vic! It was actually a fairly crap place to do a dance, as the floor was terrible, the acoustics weren't much better and the audience were a bit tame, but it's certainly up there with the Royal Festival Hall, Lincoln's Inn and Trafalgar Square for prestige points.

However, the most bizarre point of the evening, was when we came to the Hole in the Wall and found this lot:


Fake Morris Dancers
Originally uploaded by hmmm_tea


A load of rugby players dressed as Morris dancers! (no, I've never seen a Morris dancer in a frilly silk shirt either, but it was funny)

They must have been one of the best audiences we've had.

Last weekend was DERT, so 15 Thrales made their way up to Newcastle to compete as 2 teams.

After a bit of ineptness, I was the last one to arrive on the Friday evening.

There was no practice pub this year, so we did a practice in the backpackers hostel, where we were staying before heading over to the main competition.

The first pub was the Cumberland Arms, a true rapper pub (it's even got a bit of wooden flooring fitted outside especially). Unfortunately, the pub wasn't even serving when we arrived, so the audience were all a bit dead (then again, they always are in the first pub in the morning). We were first on, so we got them at their coldest. Very tight space, but the dance went ok.

After that we moved onto the Tanners. Everything just seemed to gel in this second pub and the audience were there, loud and with us (I think it was mainly the group from Durham Uni that we had to thank for that). Clive tried the "prick us do we not bleed line" and it felt quite amazing to have the whole pub calling us "bleeding pricks" in unison. It was here that Clive first came out with the 2 lines he used during the introduction for most of the rest of the day, that we were from "London-upon-Thames" and that we were "Your favourite cockney wankers". I don't think I've ever been someone's favourite cockney wanker before.

After lunch we moved onto the Eye of the Tyne. Would have been generally a good dance, had I not gone completely the wrong way right at the start. Seemed to have plenty of buzz though, but then we had Goarsach cheering us on here (as we did for most of last year).

Then it was onto the Egypt Castle. Bit of an odd space to dance, as they put the competition around the corner, where only the judges could really see it. Shame, because it's surely the audience we should be dancing to rather than the judges themselves.

Finally we went down to the ship. Another tight space, but the dance generally went well, apart from losing a sword at one point.

Before going to the evening showcase, we performed the Beadnell in the traditional competition back at the Cumberland again. It was one of the best Beadnells I've known us to do (the other being at last year's DERT - must be something about doing it in competition). The stepping went off the music a bit at times, but it wasn't that noticable and looking at the video now, the thing that really impressed me was that you can hear us walking in time with the music. Looking at the results, we were officially the most stylish in the competition.

Overall, the dancing we did during the day was good, but not great. Other than the Beadnell, I don't think we were on par with how we performed last year and the results show that. However, talking with Jon during the evening showcase, we both decided we would be disappointed if we hadn't come in the top 5.

The Results

Joint 4th, so I suppose that means we shouldn't be disappointed really, so a fair result for us.

I'm not sure the same is true for some of the other teams, however. In the past few DERTs I've been to the organising team (who pick all the venues and judges) haven't competed (this includes top teams like Black Swan). Kingsmen and Sallyport were organising this year and both are good teams capable of sweeping the board. It just seems a little cheeky when they organised it all.

( Videos )

On the Sunday, I had a wonder around the Baltic and met up with coldclimatefeed while I was in the area, but that can wait for another post.