Wassail, mumming and any other excuse

January, cold and dark. It´s hard to drag ourselves out of the door, but with so much great live entertainment going on and not a thing on the telly, (as per usual) it's a crime to stay in.

Friday I took my knitting ( I am expecting two grand children this year and feel that they will need mermaid costumes and other important stuff) and headed down to The Great Bow Wharf, for the Langport Acoustic Club Showcase night. A good crowd had gathered and proved to be a most receptive audience for myself, On The Level , Ben Banks and Rodger. It's a lovely venue and if you want to go and show em what you can do, then the first Friday of every month is open floor night, so get on down there. (you can get details by emailing Laurie on newrope@gmail.com) Now as we Somerset folk know, it is wassail season and off out into the orchard, on a cold dark night we must go to tell the apple trees that we love them, that life is better for the lovely cider that their fruit provides and to scare away the evil spirits that may be lurking in amoungst the mystletoe.

For the last year or so I have had the pleasure of playing fiddle with the Langport Mummers. A dedicated bunch of fun loving lunatics from the very depths of the Somerset levels who keep the medieval tradition of the mumming plays very much alive and up to date.

Being a fiddle player with the troupe is great because you just get to hang around at the back play along with the melodian on the relevant tunes, then help with the consumption of the required amount of cider.

This week however, just hours before our biggest performance of the year, at the famous West Croft Cider Wassail, I got a phone call from our glorious leader aka Enterin (in Mummer speak) It would seem that the Doctor was not feeling at all well. I won´t go into the symptoms here, but stepping away from the WC, was not on the cards. The long and the short of it being that I was to stop shirking at the back and step up the front and take a speaking part. The script had already been emailed to me. Needless to say I loved it, nothing like getting dressed up and acting out a medieval melodrama in a barn with a boisterous crowd , ooooing and arrring in the apropriate spots.

#wassail #mumming #cider #apples