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We all headed to Offham to meet up with Invicta Morris at the Kings Arms pub for an evening of dancing.
The main road through the village was being refurbished and this made parking very difficult. Allied to that, the pub had installed a new tree stump in our normal dancing area and this proved impossible to move. Apparently they had needed a fork lift truck to position it so we had no chance of shifting it. However, these were really just minor inconveniences and did not spoil the evening.
Invicta Morris have a long history, having being founded in 1976, and were reputedly the first all-woman Cotswold side to be formed in the county of Kent. In recognition of this, they chose team colours that were inspired by those on the Kent badge and they took their name from the county motto. "Invicta" means "undefeated" and legend has it that Kent adopted this because they were never defeated by the invading Norman armies (1066 and all that). Several Kent-based organisations use the name including one of Maidstone's Grammar schools and a Gillingham ice hockey team. Rumour has it that some members of Kettle Bridge are forming a new group dedicated to complaining about everything and this will be called Invicta Meldrew, but personally, I don't believe it.
Back to the evening's events. The two sides alternated dancing and, despite the restricted space, everyone coped very well. Kettle Bridge performed Sidcot, Marston 6, Aughton 8, Cossington, Annie's and a static Churchtown. Invicta included a dance which involved the dancers exchanging sticks by throwing them simultaneously across the set. This they achieved without a single dropped stick or injury, which is very much to their credit. It would be quite a spectacle to see Kettle Bridge attempt a similar manoeuvre with garlands!
With the sun setting and the dancing all done, the pub brought out bowls of chips for everyone. This was an excellent way to bring proceedings to a close.
Thanks go to Invicta for a great evening's dancing, to all the supporters who came along, to the band for playing so well and the pub for hosting the event (the chips were delicious!).
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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