Morris Men in the pub transform the place, not always for the better it has to be said. In the bright sunlight there’s a sense of joie de vivre as you watch grown men (red-faced and stout some of them) throwing themselves about with abandonment. It’s not for me it has to be said, but at least they exist, a small two-fingers up to a world where everything is the same. Can this be said looking at the photograph alongside, as a group of the Morris gather in the gloom outside the Wyndham Arms in Kingsbury Episcopi on the Somerset Levels. They look like they are plotting some dreadful deed that will reach fruition in the early hours of the morning when all good folk are asleep, snoring off their pints of Golden Chalice from Glastonbury Ales (sort of Abbots Bromley meets The Wicker Man with Dennis Wheatley in tow). I know the Morris was featured in a Jeff Bell’s blog recently, but Clerkenwell is a bright and breezy place where all the ghosts have long been developed and chased out of town. The same cannot be said for the Somerset Levels (apart from the beer of course, which is excellent).
There's apparently been a huge rise in cases of clourophobia (fear of clowns) in recent years. I think Morris Men have the potential to inspire the same dread. Kim Newman could write a good scary Somerset Morris Men story.
ReplyDeleteI'd put Morris Men slightly below clowns on the fear scale and on a par with the bearded camra lot supping out of pewter tankards. As for joie de vivre, there is none more happy than the clinically insane
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