May Day Memories

Facebook threw up this five year old memory yesterday

30 April 2015 at 09:53 ·

Now there's a thing!

I've just had a 'phonecall from BBC Radio Newcastle asking about dancing at dawn on Town Moor.  I'm obviously on someone's contacts list.

The young man asked the question "But why do they dance so early?"

To which the only reply could be "Because that's when the sun comes up"

There was no Dancing and Dawn on the Town Moor today, for the first time since 1978.

According to an aged Kingsman of my acquaintance, who was there at the time, the tradition started when the first Monday in May was declared a Bank Holiday as part of the Queen’s Sliver Jubilee Celebrations.  At that time most of the Newcastle Kingsmen were students, or recent post-graduates, at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne.  From their start in Rag Week 1949 the team always danced in the Quad at noon on May Day.  By the 1970s they had developed the habit of going on crawls around pubs, dancing and collecting money; an old rapper tradition.  After a crawl they would return to someone’s flat to count the money and carry on drinking and talking into the wee small hours.   

One night someone noticed the date and the fact it was nearly dawn and they had the bright idea of walking out to where the paths cross on Town Moor and dancing the sun up.  They have carried on ever since in sun, rain, fog and occasionally snow.

Within a couple of years they were joined by Tyne Bridge Women’s Morris, Sandgate Morris and other local teams who could drum up enough people prepared to rise at 4am, or stay up all night.  Other people get to hear about it and tag along, some a little the worse for wear from staying up all night.

Dancing at Dawn takes place from around 5am on 1^st May irrespective of whether that is the Bank Holiday or not.  Because if it’s not the first of May then it’s not May Day.

I became aware of the tradition in 1980 when I was going out with a Kingsman and he and a friend stayed over in my flat because it was closer to the Moor than theirs.  The friend was impressed that I got up at 4 to make them coffee, before going back to bed.  I didn’t actually take part myself until I joined Sandgate Morris in 1990, and went with my first/late husband Phil on 1^st May 1991. 

There are two ways of getting to the Moor from here.  You can turn left at the Blue House roundabout then right at Barras Bridge.  Or go across the roundabout and up Grandstand Road, which takes you right around the Moor.  Phil took the latter route.

“You’re going the wrong way” says I.

“No.  I’m going my way” he replied.

His way took us under the footbridge over Central Motorway East where the Kingsmen congregate prior to processing (Royton) to the middle of the Moor. 

Ghostly figures, some with flowery hats, mistily waving at anyone tooting them.

Phil was well enough to do the Moor in 1992.   
Later that day he had a scan to see whether removing a tumour the previous October had taken all the cancer away.   
It hadn’t.  
There were spots on his liver.   
Five months later he was dead.

I went back to Sandgate Morris and pushed for us to Dance at Dawn.  

On May Day 1993 I got up at 4 and had coffee and ginger biscuits alone.   

I got into my new Metro Rover.   

I turned on the cassette. 

Free’s All Right Now came out through the speakers.

One of the songs Phil and his mate George Welch performed as The Cheap Sunglasses Serendares.

He played the guitar solo whilst George held the rythm on the bass.  
I saw him in my minds eye at one of their Sunday lunchtime gigs in the Broken Doll.

It felt like he was with me.

“All right now, baby, it’s all right now”

A lump rose in my throat.

I didn’t turn it off.
I clenched my teeth and, chin up shoulders back (as my Dad used to say), drove, possibly a little above the speed limit, Phil’s way to the Moor.

Fortunately there were no speed cameras operating at 4.15am in those days.

I drove Phil’s way to the Moor almost every year after, with and without Fester or one of the boys, until I stopped dancing in 2013.