Saturday 16 May 2020

Rapper and Morris Numbers

Again a Facebook thread goes off on a tangent.
You may learn something reading this, if you concentrate; then again, you may not.


Feeling quite smug after:-
a) fixing the bath plug to a chain using a key ring, after the little triangular bit of metal came off and couldn't be squeezed back on and in.
b) stripping Ferretfingers' bed and getting the linen washed, out, dried and ready to go back on again - and his pyjamas too.

StBernard I probably would have felt smug if after a long absence Buzz had let me dance number 2 at Kingsmen practice but instead he f*cked with my head by making me try to learn 4.

Bentonbag If I remember rightly 2 and 4 aren't all that different (I did both with Red Star Rapper) except for the turning going into Glass - but if you have a very one sided brain swapping sides can be hard.   
There are some clog morris dances I can do almost anywhere (Piper's Ash), but others where I can only do either the left/odd or right/even side and swapping over simply buggers up my stepping completely (Churchtown, Stockton). 
But them I'm very right handed and my one experience of driving a British car on French roads freaked me out entirely!

Tylebach yay!!

Bentonbag For Stockton read Stockport! Only a few hundred miles out :}

MJH Oh please tell me that you made up all that stuff about '2 and 4' and 'the turning going into Glass ' and particularly ' I can only do either the left/odd or right/even side and swapping over simply buggers up my stepping completely'. 
This really doesn't make sense to anybody, does it?

Bentonbag To the cognoscenti it does.
In fact it's more complicated than that.   
With Red Star Rapper if I started an evening dancing at 2 I could swap over to 4 quite easily, but if I started out at 4 (the slightly simpler position because you don't cross the set and turn 180' going into Glass but shuffle sideways) I couldn't move to 2.
The problem with morris dances is that some are parallel meaning everyone starts on either the left or the right foot, but others are mirror image so you start on either the inside or the outside foot which means one side starts on the right foot while the other starts on the left - or vice versa.
So swapping sides means swapping feet hence the stepping getting buggered. 
And when you have people (naming no names but they know who they are) who can't tell their left from their right, inside from out, or up from down and have problems counting to 12 - well ..... 
it don't half take the gilt off the gingerbread I can tell you. 
I didn't start going grey until I started doing clog morris!

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