For the next week and a bit, Peter J can be seen dancing on stage, nightly, in the South London Theatre's production of A Christmas Carol.
Many thanks to the excellent James Denny of Thames Valley Morris Men, who plays a variety of squeezeboxes throughout the production, and persuaded the director to put the dance into the show.
"It is as if someone has snipped off the coner of a peaceful Cotsworld village green and dropped it down in this heart of city darkness," says Times Educations Supplement Journalist Stephen Jones.
The Kanssens' dog Myrtle is now the official London Pride animal.
I read Don Quixote over the summer (it's the classic text on the Mid Life Crisis, chaps), and was interested to see the poor old Knight victimised by a Morris man."During this conversation, it unluckily fell out, that one of the company anticly dressed, being the fool of the play, came up striking with his morrice bells and three full-blown cows' bladders fastened to the end of a stick. In this odd appearance he began to flourish his stick in the air, and bounce his bladders against the ground just at Rozinante's nose.""The jingling of the bells, and the rattling noise of the bladders so startled and affrighted the quiet creature, that Don Quixote could not hold him in; and having got the curb betwixt his teeth, away the horse hurried his unwilling rider up and down the plain, with more swiftness than his feeble bones seemed to promise."
(Part 2, Chapter XI, "Of the Stupendous Adventure that befell the valorous Don Quizote, with the Chariot or Cart of the Court or Parliament of Death.")Sounds a pretty clear morris dancer, in a translation of a Spanish book written in 1615. Unfortunately, the copy I was reading - Wordsworth Classics - doesn't say who translated it or when.
Estando en estas pláticas, quiso la suerte que llegase uno de la compañía, que venía vestido de bojiganga, con muchos cascabeles, y en la punta de un palo traía tres vejigas de vaca hinchadas; el cual moharracho, llegándose a don Quijote, comenzó a esgrimir el palo y a sacudir el suelo con las vejigas, y a dar grandes saltos, sonando los cascabeles, cuya mala visión así alborotó a Rocinante, que, sin ser poderoso a detenerle don Quijote, tomando el freno entre los dientes, dio a correr por el campo con más ligereza que jamás prometieron los huesos de su notomía. Sancho, que consideró el peligro en [que] iba su amo de ser derribado, saltó del rucio, y a toda priesa fue a valerle; pero, cuando a él llegó, ya estaba en tierra, y junto a él, Rocinante, que, con su amo, vino al suelo: ordinario fin y paradero de las lozanías de Rocinante y de sus atrevimientos.Which Babel fish translates as :
"Being in these talks, it wanted the luck that arrived one from the company, that came dress from bojiganga, with many bells, and in the end of swollen a three wood vejigas of cow brought; which moharracho, arriving itself at Don Quixote, began to use the wood and to shake the ground with vejigas, and to give great jumps, sounding the bells, whose bad vision thus it excited to Rocinante...What's a "bojiganga"? It seems to be an old word without a modern English translation. But the Spanish definition is "Compañía teatral ambulante del Siglo de Oro, de pocos integrantes, que representaba comedias y autos", which seems to translate as a "small travelling theatre company which puts on comedies ("and cars").
No pictures of the men this time. With only seven men, no one had a spare hand to take them.
This is Holly Davies, from the Prince's Trust.
It's all for charity - helping disadvantage youth (which is what the Prince's Trust does).
Holly caught us as we finished up another successful but exhausting Canal Festival outing - our third year at an excellent festival.
Holland Park had a marquee, a steel band, a barbecue, the tenants and staff of Peter's project... and us.
Two of our men had birthdays recently. John and Jeremy Monson are 80 and 50. So we had a celebration in the Harpenden village hall, with music, country dancing, food and drink.
At one point, a circle dance left Peter waltzing with John, both in kit. It made me wonder. How about a whole 3/4 Morris tradition, developed by itinerant Austrian musicians, and only just re-discovered? We could start with Sweet Jenny Strauss and go on from there...
... though we didn't actually meet her.
A thousand flats, and the home of celebrities including Harold Wilson and Mandy Rice Davies, it has a very nice garden which yesterday, had a marquee, refreshments and a bunch of residents enjoying themselves.
Sophie opened it at 3pm, so she was gone by our first spot at 7.30. We didn't meet her, but we did catch up with our old friend and international Morris celebrity (he's toured abroad), Bruce Clitherow.
He's in fine form!
This clip gets the feel of it - Peter's residents sitting on the wall, one gent joining in with gay abandon, and three girls 
skipping round us, and the piercing tones of Jeremy's sax. Public Morris as it should be!
