Summer is nearly here! It’s time to take up smoking again and sit on benches drinking cider, watching improbably thin shirtless idiots parade around with their crap friends and occasionally eat salad. In fact, I often find the summer so innocuous that I long for everyone wrap themselves up in scarves and return to the grey genderless days of winter when it’s easier to concentrate on things other than people’s arses and weird tan lines. At least it gives me some time to escape the country and head to northern Europe where people don’t suddenly turn into complete idiots when the temperature gets above 15 degrees.

I often think back to my childhood summers when we hardly ever went abroad. I was dragged from pub to pub by my parents being forced to stay up late listening to loud repetitive music, often spending weeks on the road whilst their friends fed me far too much beer for a ten-year-old. Having spent most of my teenage years hiding the photographs whenever my friends came to visit, I will now admit proudly that I was a Morris dancer, my summers spent at folk festivals with men with beards.

The winters were spent practising in a small village hall with creaky floorboards, whilst each week from May to September we would dance at a different pub. The choice of pub was extremely important, as Morris men are very fussy about their ale – much as the glitterati object to a badly made cocktail, a Morris man will never return to a pub where he was served a bad pint of beer.

At the summer festivals the rivalry within the Morris dancing world is ritually enacted. Seeing large groups of Morris men congregate is an interesting sight. Firstly, there is little dialogue between those who dance different styles. Border Morris dancers (the ones with rag coats and blacked up faces who run around shrieking) are looked down upon by the more elegant Cotswold dancer – just as a baroque architect would look down on his simpleton gothic predecessor. Morris groups normally belong to one of two organisations. The Morris Ring (the more mystical free-mason style association) does not permit women, although blacks and people with disabilities are allowed, as long as they have adequate testosterone levels. The more forward thinking Morris Federation allow women, although some sides only let them play music, as women may get confused during an intricate stick dances and may get their fingers broken (this is actually a very common Morris dancing injury – I’ve seen it happen on several occasions). Then we have micro-regional differences, especially sides from Oxfordshire who dance their individual traditions, although altercations are good natured, there are some heated debates about the ‘proper’ steps involved in certain dances.

Having said this, Morris dancers are all on the same side, it’s not until you meet north west clog dancers that you begin to get real football club style rivalry. The terrifying Rivington Clog dancers have their footwork drilled in the military style in order to create the austerity of life in t’mill from where that particular tradition originates.

Once, many years back I heard a story of some dancers camping at a festival and they could hear loud sex noises coming from one of the tents. And so the Morris dancers (in costume) gathered around the tent and started to shout encouraging advice to whom they thought was their friend. Imagine the dismay of the poor innocent camper who had taken his girlfriend for a romantic weekend in the countryside, upon sticking his head out of the tent sees the men in bells and ribbons offering him sex advice. Being sexy (incidentally) was the whole point of dancing during the Morris revival in the 1960s. Though today associated with an older demographic, back then (according to my mother), girls were very much attracted to Morris dancers jumping around and waving their big sticks in the air.

So why has Morris dancing become so uncool? As my parents always said to me as an embarrassed teenager; “It could be worse. We could be nudists. Or Morris dancing nudists.” It was revived along with folk music in the 1960s, but whereas folk music developed, few Morris dancers dared to ‘go electric’ along with Bob Dylan. As Vice magazine tells us, handkerchiefs, ribbons, rosettes and bell pads are no longer the height of fashion (although if you go to Berlin, wearing denim jackets as trousers is a must). This is an issue which some sides have tried to address, such as Southend-on-Sea’s S&M style ‘biker Morris’ who wear leather and prefer to clank spanners rather than sticks. But is Morris dancing any more ridiculous that hip-hop street dancing in baggy clothes? Or ballet, where you can’t even get drunk. Or boring bloody line dancing. Or the bloody boring bloody Irish dancing of pre-pubescent girls made to look like prostitutes by their ever pregnant mothers? The correct answer to these rhetorical questions is no.  

Having spent much of my childhood driving across the English countryside with middle-aged men sampling beer and cream teas, it is sad to see it in decline. Many of the dancers are getting older and Morris dancing is surprisingly energetic; most dances being composed of a series of leaps and jumps. Arthritis is taking over and the younger generation is reluctant to take its place. Which is understandable, as Morris dancing acts rather like a nuclear deterrent: It’s comforting to know it’s there, but I don’t actually want to get involved in nuclear war.  As summer is approaching and the Morris dancers will shortly be donating their handkerchiefs to local heritage museums, why not head out to a pub, buy a pint of what you know will be good ale and enjoy the most English of English traditions before it’s too late.  And if you’re feeling really enthusiastic why not start a new revival. Or a revolt. Or an uprising. Or a revolution….