19 June 2016 - Brockham

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Demonstrating the cows-tail move in Cossington.
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The Surrey Hills Cow Parade is a scheme for individuals, companies and schools to sponsor a life-sized cow which is decorated and then displayed around the county until the end of August. All the cows then congregate at the Surrey Hills Food, Drink & Music Festival, where they will be judged. This will be followed by an auction of the cows to raise money which is split between the cow sponsor's nominated charity and the Surrey Hills Trust Fund, a charity established to conserve and protect the Surrey Hills Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.

All very good but what has this to do with Kettle Bridge's get-together with Mayflower Morris (another North West morris side) at The Royal Oak in Brockham? Well, we had an unexpected visitor turn up at the pub in the (rather large) form of a painted cow. This turned out to be Jane Bond, one of the Cow Parade entrants. This particular beast is raising money for The Royal British Legion and it provided plenty of photo opportunities (and a theme for my report!).

Following last year's rather damp event with Mayflower at the same location, we were blessed this year with much butter weather. It was pleasantly warm so nobody complained that it was friesian cold and there was not a jersey in sight.

Mayflower set the bull rolling with the first dance and thereafter we alternated performances. For the pre-lunch session, we did Prescot, Cowsington and Saint Helens Gala. Interestingly, in their set, Mayflower danced Sidcot, which we are obviously very familiar with.

We had then reached the calfway point of proceedings so it was time for a well-earned rest and a break for lunch. The pub had kindly laid on some food for us including samoosas and chips, which went down very well (and very quickly!). I quenched my thirst with a glass of milk (of course!) with a dash of angustura butters.

Suitably refreshed, we embarked on anudder set of dances and performed Aughton 6 and Mooston 8. We cud have danced until the cows came home but decided to finish with one last dance, namely Churchtown where the audience (and Mayflower!) were encouraged to join in.

Something else that I noticed during Mayflower's dances was that they, like us, are not afraid to use unorthodox tunes to accompany their dancers. Unless I am very much mistaken, their band played a Buddy Holly song and the theme from Wallace and Gromit for one dance! In the circumstances, perhaps it would have been more appropriate to use Marvin Gaye's "Herd it through the bovine" .

Beef-ore I finish, I must say thanks to Mayflower for a great day's dancing and to our legendairy band for all their heiferts. Oh, and a complaint to the squire for not including Low-stock in the list of dances.


Note to webmaster:
Judging by the awful puns in this report, you are definitely pasture sell-by date! Please steer clear of such nonsense in future.

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Kettle Bridge Clogs web site by Stephen Cordery is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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