November 2022

It’s been a much busier year than I expected. Is that an excuse for a lack of news updates? Probably not but the one I started in late summer has now morphed into the end of year one.
There has been a lot going on and I am almost as busy as before lockdown but it is definitely different; very few gigs for the bands and no major events for the mAy team but more calling gigs, either working on my own or with other bands, so here is a summary and you can read more about it all as I update the various pages [on my new and revamped website].

Fame at Last!

The autumn edition of English Dance and Song carried a two-page article of reflections of more than 50 years involvement in Folk which has had some really nice reactions. See the article here…

I have also been interviewed for a Radio Walk based around Cecil Sharp House and we hope to make that available very soon.

Meanwhile Morris! Hey! is now available as a download through the English Folk Dance and Song Society so hopefully it will reach a much wider audience. At the same time we have finally produced a second edition of The Maypole Manual with my new publisher The Endless Bookcase and I am now part of an Authors Group which feels very grand. I have joined the Club for Acts and Actors as a performing member and topped the bill at an entertainment evening there in June (apparently celebrating 125 years of the club).

Celebrations

The Jubilee was a great weekend for me; 5 gigs in 4 days driving 300 miles and a couple of train journeys. The highlight was a reunion gig for Allcock and Brown which should have been on the Sun Pier at Chatham but got moved into the clubhouse because of high winds. Huge acclaim so maybe we aren’t finished yet. I also marked most of the different celebrations of the year from Burns night to Paddy’s and Bastille Day through to Christmas with Care Homes events, now my most frequent gigs, covering more than a dozen different themes.

Maypoles

Still a major part of my life but with fewer schools events. One that we did have in Muswell resulted in the creation of a set of lesson plans that we hope to make available soon and we also took the Maypole to a school for the deaf where one of my colleagues was able to use her sign language skills. We had hoped to be part of a major event in Crayford but it had to be postponed so watch out next year for news of Maypoles and the Plum Pudding Riots of 1647. More dramatically I went out to Madrid where I introduced Maypole Dancing to pupils and parents at St George’s English School (they built their own) and even had a bunch of Star Wars characters joining in. I also took the Maypole to be a major part of a fabulous wedding in Lancashire, events in Worthing and a damp street party on Wandsworth Bridge Road. After the last few years of uncertainty major events like Countryfile Live have not got going again so the mAy team was restricted to a couple of events for the team at the Chiltern Open Air Museum (COAM), some of which became training events and took two or three of us to various Corporate Fun Days. At the time of writing the future of COAM is rather uncertain so everything is rather up in the air.

Other Gigs

As I said earlier I am still doing barn dances, about 12 through the year, and we actually had 3 gigs for Quicksilver which were great. I did work with another band for a few gigs in the summer but the rest were with recorded music which seem to work really well. In my last newsletter I talked about a grant I received from EFDSS to digitise these events – the project has not been completely plain sailing as it took three attempts to get the equipment I wanted but the process is nearly complete and will be launched fully at one of the upcoming events when I will report back on this. There’s a few solo gigs some of which are very informal, others higher profile such as Rochester Dickensian Christmas and still others purely commercial for product launches and the like. I am still job sharing the Country Dance classes for the English Folk Dance and Song Society on Thursdays (see events page). One other event to mention was Lynn Willson’s wonderful London Playford event where a group of us took Playford Dances to the places after which they were named.

Talks, Conferences and Consultancy

These have taken a while to get going with hardly any in the last year. I did do one on Morris, with added tutorial, at very short notice replacing a local morris side. I also have a few coming up for the Christmas Carols and Customs theme and a new talk about Music Hall where I have a possible combined talk and workshop on Country Dancing in the New Year. I have attended a number of different conferences and seem to be asked for my thoughts and advice on a range of different issues which I am happy to do whether it involves a conversation, a quick email or something more substantial.

So, there’s plenty going on even to the extent that I am now regularly turning gigs down so that I can get a bit of a social life and something strange called a holiday.