The Morris Hat

The Morris hat is an Anarchic hat
The Morris hat is a beautiful hat
The Morris hat is a Cheltenham folk festival hat
The Morris hat is a dashing hat
The Morris hat is an eccentric hat
The Morris hat is a flowered hat
The Morris hat is a glimmer of summer on a wild, wet day in Cheltenham


More about Morris dancing here.

I spent my second day in the creche at Cheltenham folk festival helping a young boy fix the coupling on his cardboard train, so that when he shunted the engine, the carriages did not disconnect. After several false starts and TWO hours*, I finally sorted it to my, and his, complete satisfaction. He wants to make an animation of it this evening. I have a feeling he will grow up to be an engineer. I have a feeling I will not. Incidentally, his father came in to give him his sandwiches ( which he chose to eat in the train) and, guess what? his dad is a real life Morris man!

The Morris men in green 'stripped' jackets were from Bristol, but I neglected to find out where the side in the photo in the red strips comes from. Close up, I recognised some of the strips of fabric as similar to a duvet cover I had in 1982. Some of the Morris sides (such as the Cotswold morris) wear white, with a colourful 'baldrick' (yes, really! that's a sash to you or me), and real flowers in their straw boaters. But I prefer the DIY duvet-cover Morris sides and the Border sides with blackened faces. The Border in this case often means the English-Welsh border.

It was raining so hard today that there was no dancing in the streets. The Morris sides performed in turn outside Cheltenham's grand town hall, under the portico. Morris dancers and audience thronged around the main doorway and under the canopy, and it was difficult to get a good shot. Hence the hat-blip.

After I finished the train-shift, I checked out a hippy garment called a hug, made of recycled sweaters, that can be worn in eight different ways. I couldn't get it to look good in any of the eight, so in protest I went to the other shops in the town. After a while I became aware of folk withdrawal symptoms, and returned to see a young band called Tyde
who impressed me a lot.

Sadly, I then had to take the bus home. Next year, and there will be a next year, I will arrange either to have a lift or to stay over, so that I can see more music. When I am siting in a bar with a half of cider, listening to a session, where musicians of every age and calibre play together for the joy of it, I am in folkie heaven.

With bells on.


* I was doing other things as well