A beautiful early summer evening on May 15th at the Railway Inn, Culham, with our old friends at Towersey Morris.

The Railway Inn is appropriately named. As you can see, it’s right next door to Culham Station. Here we are getting the evening underway with Sidesteps.

Starting the evening at the Railway Inn, Culham

Towersey Morris at the Railway Inn

Cry Havoc was originally formed by a Towersey dancer, and we share a lot of repertoire. Here’s two sets from Havoc and one from Towersey dancing Constant Billy.

Cry Havoc and Towersey Morris with a massed Constant Billy at the Railway Inn, Culham.

Finishing Constant Billy with Towersey Morris at the Railway Inn, Culham

What the photos don’t show is the stiff competition from a passing freight train about one minute into the dance.

For the rail buffs, I think this was 672J early in its journey from Didcot to Mossend Euroterminal in Lanarkshire.

Thusrsday May 8th saw us dancing at the Cock Inn, Combe, with Wychwayz Border Morris.

It’s fair to say that we weren’t at our most organised, and managed to turn up with any sticks! Wychwayz generously lent us their for a couple of dances – Young Collins with shorter sticks than normal is unexpectedly tricky – but we spent most of the evening waving hankies instead, and also tried Constant Billy with clapping rather than sticks. This works surprisingly well, and Acting Squire Jim is very grateful to our friends at Foxwelp Morris for the idea!

The music session after dancing was unusual. The Cock Inn provides nothing less than a white grand piano for its visitors, and on our evening there was a local gentleman playing. He not only joined in with us:

but also treated us to a little ragtime!

Havoc’s May Day outing was an evening event at The Punter on Osney Island. On arrival, things didn’t look good for an evening’s dancing.

We improvised, doing a few dances in a confined space inside the pub. Constant Billy was tricky enough, but we really felt the lack of room doing our audience participation dance, Sherherd’s Hey. This is usually done in a large circle. This evening was more a highly squashed oval.

Luckily the rain lifted enough to allow a couple of outside dances, before we called a halt to dancing for the evening and retreated back into The Punter for a long session of music and songs, accompanied by various other folky types still going from the morning.

Here we are doing ‘Vandals’ in the gloaming.

For St. George’s day, we were invited to dance at the Eight Bells at Eaton … although, somehow we ended up there on St. George’s day plus one! It was very pleasant spring evening: perfect for a few dances and some tunes.

At the Eight Bells on St. George’s day + 1

Cry Havoc performed two half hour dance spots at the Upton Fete on Saturday.

Upton Fete is a rather jolly little village fete. All the usual suspects were happening; plant stall, raffle, tombola, book stall, local preserves stall, and a dog show. There were also some classic and not so classic vehicles – including an autogyro – on display and some birds of prey.

Dancing (mercifully) on hard standing by the village hall, we had a captive audience of customers of the tea and cakes sellers inside the hall. Nevertheless we managed to attract a few willing victims for Shepherd’s Hey!

Constant Billy at Upton Fete