Life, the Universe and Everything

 I don’t have a broken ankle, but my partner recently broke hers. Most of my experience before this was at school where there always seemed to be someone who’d broken something and had a nice white cast which we gathered around to autograph. It seemed like a trivial rite of passage for the unfortunate few. Turns out that a broken ankle is quite a big deal. To start with, you can’t put any weight on it for about 6 weeks.   If you have a job that requires you to be walking around, it’s just about impossible for several months. The NHS doesn’t provide you with a wheelchair and in any case, one wouldn’t be particularly useful if you have a substantial number of steps to reach your front door. You’re not totally immobile, the NHS does give you crutches and for the first 6 weeks or so, you can make some progress relying on your good leg to bear a lot of the weight. A major irritation with crutches is what to do with them when you’re NOT using them. Wherever you “park” them, they...

In 2019 and for over 30 years before, similar dances have been offered once a month on a Saturday night during except during summer. This was the second scheduled event this winter although the first in January was cancelled. In years gone by, entry was usually by cash on the door and numbers could go over 100 although occasionally they were much lower. This event was limited to 80  tickets bought online in advance. All 80 tickets were sold and I know at least two people who missed out.  Quite a few of the dancers were people who would have been there in 2019 but there were a lot of first timers - and that wouldn't have been so unusual prior to the pandemic. The organisers were keen to be "Covid-safe",  all stewards were masked-up and there was guidance on the website: Covid-19 Safety Guidance We know that we need to keep everyone who wants to come to our dances as safe as possible. Our safety guidance for everyone attending is this: If you have Covid symptoms please don’...

 In 2019 and for several decades before, similar dances have been offered once a month on a Friday night during except during summer. This was the second scheduled event this winter although the first in December was cancelled. We certainly had 16 people on the floor quite often and it might have occasionally got up to 20.  In normal times, numbers could go over 100 although occasionally it's much less.  Most of the dancers were people who would have been there in 2019 although I did spot at least one completely novice couple. The organisers were keen to be "Covid-safe" and advertised Compulsory Covid Pass checking Compulsory LFT before attending Compulsory Green/Yellow/Red ribbons for 2019-style/distancing/own partners only choices. These were enforced with the possible exception of the LTF (If the NHS checker App was set to only show "pass" if the vaccination and test were both in order, then it was enforced)  Nearly everyone chose a green ribbon. I've ...

 Chippenham Folk Festival is normally in late-May but this year they put on slightly over a day of events 22-23 October. No campsite was offered and most of the larger venues were not used. Tickets for events were initially only available online although at the last minute, they were made available from the box office. I attended two dance events Balfolk workshop and Bal This attracted about 30 people although I was told that 60 tickets were available. It was held on the Saturday afternoon in Chippenham Town Hall, a superb upstairs room with an excellent floor. A handful of dancers arrived wearing masks and one kept hers on when dancing. Otherwise, it was very much as "normal".  It's difficult to comment on numbers because a directly comparable event didn't happen in pre-pandemic times. My feeling is that in normal times, selling all 60 tickets would have been hard - although had there, by chance, been a lack of recent similar events.it could well have happened. Ceili...

 In normal times, this is a series of monthly events attracting over 100 dancers. This was a "restart" event and the intention is that there will be another dance in October and presumably monthly thereafter. Differences from normal included: A different hall with around a quarter of the floor area of the usual spaces. I asked the organiser if this was deliberate but she said not. .The usual spaces were not available. There were nearly always 32 dancers on the floor and no more than 40. This was low compared to the usual 100+ but fitted the hall well. The large number of students normally seen were absent but this is probably because it's still the vacation. It was my impression that the proportion of the very oldest dancers was less and the that the middle-aged were more prominent. I saw 3 masks being worn by 20-somethings Everyone danced normally but perhaps with a little more enthusiasm and joy than normal.

Moira Furnace Folk Festival is a small event usually held in late-August in the North West Leicestershire village of  Moira  which advertised a ceilidh: For comparison here's  video of the 2019 event which shows the same band, venue and number of dancers as at the 2021 event.  It's typical of many smaller festivals in that the ceilidh is a small event with a local band and attracts a crowd of  30-40 people.  So, does this imply that Covid-19 has ceased to impact public dance events? Almost!  I saw just one face covering and the wearer did not attempt to dance  Hand sanitiser was available and I saw a few people use it  The caller asked at the beginning if we were Ok with dances involving touching other people and did we mind changing partners?  There was no dissent and many accepted "Dance line it's 2019" stickers from me On a couple of occasions, the caller made  (possibly humourous) concessions to infection control such as calli...

This post is written to document what is and is not happening as of early August 2021 at a festival that usually sees lots of dancing. It's hoped that the observations will help dancers, organisers and others to plan for the future. Introduction In normal years, this festival has a lot of social dancing in the form of ceilidhs, contras, American squares and the odd Bal or two. Typically, theses events are in marquees or local community halls. The number of  different people dancing over the course of the week probably approaches 1000. By the time the festival started in 2021, "dancing like it was 2019" had been legal for several weeks  but due to the long lead times for booking infrastructure, etc. the cut-down festival planned no indoor events and no dancing.  The Anchor Ceilidhs One of the pubs, The Anchor Inn put on their lunchtime ceilidh series. Differences from 2019 included: No late-afternoon ceilidh Another row of tables on each side of the dancefloor which reduce...

This is my practical guide based on many years experience mainly aimed at the UK based/English speaking dancers. Be aware that in 2020, the festival is moving (again) to the Claydon Estate in Buckinghamshire so this guide might not be as reliable as some of my other guides. Summary: A medium sized broad spectrum mainly folk festival with a excellent dance programme. Getting there It's a rural "stately home" site that appears to be approached down narrow lanes some distance from major roads. If driving, I would allow plenty of time to do the last 5 miles. Users of public transport should check their options very carefully. The site is compact, you don't need to drive around. Food & Drink There's a good choice of "festival food" stalls on site. These are occasionally "expensive" and never cheap. There would appear to be no off-site places to eat or buy food and drink without travelling several miles. There were several on-site bars ...

This is my practical guide based on 10 days at the 2018 event mainly aimed at the UK based/English speaking dancers. Getting there According to Google Maps, it's a 336 miles/5 hours 8 minutes drive from the ferry port at Caen. That's not as bad as you might think. French roads are straighter, less crowded and better maintained than UK roads. Driving in France is quite pleasant . Also, on the autoroutes, you are allowed to drive at 130km/hour  (about 81mph) most of the way. If you avoid tolls, it takes another hour and the roads are similarly good, straight and uncongested.  Food Unless you plan to drive in search of food/restaurants, you should plan to eat on site. Some food traders do attend but their hours are short - I never even saw them. The festival's own catering is OK and in some ways very flexible. For a fixed price, you can mix and match. So, if EG you want lots of cheese but no sweet course, you can. At the checkout they check what you've got and g...

Now and then I end up accidentally showing off on the dance floor big-time. It happened to me at a late night event at Towersey Festival a couple of years back. The management had put on a great band playing Jive stuff but the audience knew Ceilidh, Bal Folk, Cajun and a little Swedish Polska. But there were two of us who could Jive and we found each other. So while a few hundred people  struggled to get a "pogo dance" out of the music, we Jived. I don't think she knew much but could she follow ! Growing in confidence with her ability, I threw caution and convention to the winds and let rip. After a dozen dances, she thanked me and went back to her friends. I'd been half expecting it - we were getting a lot of attention and there's a convention of "circulating" unless you are a couple in "real life". No way were we at all plausible as a couple off the dance-floor and less dance-aware friends might have pulled us apart. Of course, circul...

Maybe like me, you clocked stories like this one about the mysterious side by side toilets at the Sochi Winter Olympics. Be very afraid, it has spread to the UK! I was at a dance on the Cotswold village of Horsley and instead of happening in the Village Hall as usual it had moved across the road to the church. Lovely slippy wooden floor just right for those spinny French waltzes - but I digress, I visited the "the facilities" and discovered...     As I'm a gentleman, I used the one on the left. I still can't stop wondering WHY ?

Before I got into dancing I got dizzy very easily and had nasty experiences on some fairground rides. As I did more dancing, my tolerance for rotation increased greatly and nowadays I can do very long swings, spinny French waltzes, etc. without any trouble. Of course, I sometimes find myself partnered with someone who gets dizzy and have to look out for that. Novices who get dizzy often get advised to do "spotting" or to focus on some convenient part of their partner's body. I've always suspected that this is rubbish advice because:  I don't use either technique and I'm fine If you are the leader in a couple on a crowded dance floor you need to use your eyes more intelligently than that! So I was interested in some recent research that suggests that dancer's brains adapt over time to suppress input from their vestibular systems, I thought about this again at a recent ceilidh where I danced with a very old friend who I hadn't seen for about...

Plantar fasciitis is a pain in the heel that is typically worst first thing in the morning. This is my story of continuing recovery. I am not medically qualified and if you suspect you have Plantar fasciitis, get a doctor or physiotherapist to check and follow their advice. For standard information, try this Wikipedia article and for evidence-based advice, try the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence article So, I "caught" Plantar fasciitis at the Chippenham Folk Festival at the end of May. I did a lot of vigorous ceilidh dancing mainly on a "wood" floor that probably had concrete a few mm down. By the time I got home, walking was extremely painful. I had already booked for two festivals in August so I needed to fix things fast. I have largely succeeded. Here's what I tried, my thinking and observations: I stopped walking 4km a day to work and drove. In fact I became a total couch potato.This was intended to reduce further damage and pain ...

You know how it is when a dance goes so right? Maybe the music was just magic, your partner inspired or your body gave more than you remembered it could. It's so easy in your enthusiasm to jump up for the next dance, but it can never match the magic one. It's an anticlimax. So, instead, sit and savour that fresh memory. Or walk out into the night air for a time. You know how wine experts talk about "aftertaste", it's like that. A good dance lasts longer than the music.

Had some really fine dances with a friend recently. She's always been an inventive and fun dancer with loads of power and stamina but over the last year or two she's sharpened up on what you might call "precision". She is exactly where she wants to be - and it matches what I'm trying to do so well. Superb! :-)

Extraordinary experience at a ceilidh last weekend, I danced the final polka with a male partner. It's not the first time I've done that but it could hardly be called a habit. My partner/follower was a young man I know as a wild and athletic dancer and I expected a bumpy ride. To my surprise, he didn't "lead" at all and neither did he "follow" in the conventional way. It was as if I'd bolted on a power steering unit. He was adding power in exactly direction I wanted to go. This is quite different to most female partners. They tend accept the lead fairly passively - or steal it! So how was he doing it? I think he might have been sensing my steering and responding fluently with extra power in the same direction - just like power assisted steering on a car. I also wondered if as he's a man used to dancing the man's part, he was making steering decisions very similar to mine. However, it seems unlikely that there wouldn't have been ...

This is sometimes paraphrased as "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it" and I saw this in demonstrated recently at the Bromyard Folk Festival. What they did was to hire the same polished wooden dance floor they and other festivals used a few years back. So, in one sense you could say they had remembered and even celebrated the past - as you might expect for a folk festival. What they'd forgotten was how difficult and dangerous this floor is to dance on. Basically it's as slippery as several eels and those who didn't fall over had to curtail their exuberance. Even a fairly sedate North West Morris side who danced in one of the intervals in the ceilidh had several falls. So, why does this failure to learn from history happen? In some organisations, people turnover may mean that the decision-makers simply don't know about past disasters (or triumphs for that matter). Related to this can be the arrogance of the "new broom" ...

You might think this festival involved two-tier beds but the local preserved railway line. in Wallingford is known as "The Bunk" and the festival is intended to raise funds for it. The festival takes over a large green space called The Kinecroft in the middle of the town Here there are all manner of stalls and entertainments... I'm not sure that all these flags are for actual countries. An interesting challenge for the insurance industry .. but there are no precautions to address the health needs of the donkeys!  For a moment, I thought the local buses had entered into the colourful spirit of the occasion Street entertainer There was dancing of course or I wouldn't have been there.The local sports centre has quite a decent floor although it's not too large. The organisers cleverly put the better known band on the Friday night and the local hopefuls on Saturday to balance the numbers.  Unfortunately, I didn...

 The core of a great dancing experience is the music: Here, a large and diverse group of musicians came together to play for an dance outside .  Festivals are not all about organised events. I was with some friends having a meal near the Ham Marquee and some musicians sat down nearby and played some French dance music, just for the fun of it. So we got up and danced... At one of the more organized dances, I came across Basil again - he's slowed up a little over the years but he's still the most extraordinary dancer. He thinks nothing of break-dancing in a ceilidh or using a puppet as a partner. In this video he's "learning" the Bour ée from his partner although I suspect he knows more than he's letting on Here, Basil (right) compares notes with another dancer Adam is a respected fiddle player but also a bit of a poser  The late night dance venue on a remote hilltop The long walk home to the campsite The "Anchor G...

I've written about Adrian the sound man a few years ago. Things took a downturn recently because a rather "superior" musician who had some connection with the BBC saw Adrian's antique equipment, invoked "Health and Safety" and threw a fit. The upshot was that for several years, Chippenham Folk Festival had smart-looking equipment at one of the dance venues. It was operated by less-talented people and sounded average at best. Adrian adjusts his equipment This year, there was some sort of cock-up and no "official" engineer at all. So, they  turned again to Adrian. If you can see the "problem", you're using your eyes too much. Pop along next year and use your ears!