How I stopped worrying and learned to love ..... Morris Dancing!

Chippy tat tableux
Originally uploaded by bltphoto

God bless bank holidays,....and god bless the sea side. It's years since I've been to Hastings but me and BLBW had excellent time at the Jack in the Green festival this May Day.

And yes we even enjoyed the Morris teams, not so much the traditional white hanky teams but the covered in weirdness scary face paint mad drumming ones! The traditonal ones still seemed a little repressed and full of people who needed a lot help getting into their groove. The other wilder teams (often tellingly with female dancers) just seemed to be having a better time.

In a mass with giant dancing sculptures, a weird dancing bushes (jack himself) and the crowd dressed up and draped in greenery it was excellent spectical, even in the chilly breeze.

It was much more fun than the parallel Bikers convention that was also going on, which seemed a little staid (curiously), lots of people in their leathers wandering round eating chips and looking at strangely uniform bikes. Where the hanky morris teams had a strong hint of accoutancy about them the bikers had a whiff of the free lance IT consultant, even the mulleted rotund bikers on home-made trikes seemed to be strangely conservative (such careful stitching on their rebel patches) .

I'm, always surprised how bland Harley Davidson's look even with their chrome and fringed saddle bags they always seem a little smooth and corporate, thankfully the Modernist Brotherhood (79 vintage?) made a small showing later in the day even if the had just called the AA :(.

We had such a good time we didn't even manage a round of mini golf!

So which is the next seaside town we should visit and why?

What we've learned so far this week?

Some known facts:

That there’s never been a bad picture taken of Steve McQueen or in fact Chet Baker either!

That Peter Kay needs to write with other people to be truly funny and also TV comedy is best done in half hour slots.

That surely "Landes Banki" is the silliest named investment for grownups since “my Booky Wook” came out...

That Chinatown is the most overpriced place to eat in the centre of town, really £7.50 for some Pak choi choy!

That there’s no helping some people…. I saw on one of those internal envelopes the otherday someone had drawn smiley faces next to people’s names.

That it's worth going into "al'barone" just to try their new draught Duvel it’s probably the best lager (sorry blonde ale thanks PB) in the world. !!

That "al'barone" is a lesson in almost medieval theology; that the ecstatic highs of the beer are balanced by being ignored by the bar staff, 2 of whom stood and looked at me wiping glasses while I tried to get served, then in rolled the London’s most pissed vertical Scotsman (a particularly hotly contested field) followed by the (literally) bouncy cast of “we will rock you”. I think I need another sip of that Duvel.

Duvel Update wed evening: it's a new fromDuvel that's not as strong as normal Duvel and so more refreshing to drink and sadly only on draught in ABO :(

We love it when our friends are successful!

It started off on a mattress in alley just off the Ramblas and ended up in a hole in the ground in Galway

Declan and Billy are 2 of Ireland’s leading archaeologist and as well as the usual digging and scraping they have been at the forefront of proving that good old beer is at the heart of mankind’s development from random berry picking bison bothering hunter gatherers to the wonderful civilisation we have today.

Their latest project: making ancient beer in a hole in the ground. It seems to have worked better than expected.

No doubt it will all be another tale to add to their very long list of anecdotes. If you are in Galway and bump into them (not as unlikely as it seems) get them to tell you the one about the guy who measures kids for a living oh and the nuns in Uganda and Billy’s castle and and…..
Go to the Moore group’s excellent website for loads of details and pictures.

We love it when our friends are famous the Urban Woo had being singing the praises of middle age beef cake in 'graph!