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On the road with a long-distance morris dancer

A.S.H. Smyth

Wednesday, 13th August 2008

When A.S.H. Smyth was asked to accompany a friend on a 150-mile morris dance from London to Norwich, he could hardly say no. But morris dancing is a perilous pursuit

‘I’m morris dancing to Norwich and I need someone to captain my road-crew. You’re the only man for the job. Yours, Tim.’ Tim FitzHigham, Bt. BA Hons. Dunelm. FRGS (all Ret.) is a man so wildly different even Ranulph Fiennes thinks he’s a little crazy. And Sir Ranulph is by no means alone. When Tim rowed the Channel in an original Thos. Crapper bath (one example among many), Marcus Brigstocke felt duty-bound to ask him if he was aware that ‘most of us just stay at home and write our jokes from there’.

Naturally, I took the job (who the hell else was going to?) and thus found myself playing Jeeves to Tim FitzHigham’s Wooster as he attempted his latest mad challenge: a re-enactment of William Kemp’s stunt of 1600, in which, after falling out with Shakespeare over the dramatic value of a ‘humorous’ dog-on-wheels (in Hamlet, of course), Kemp amply demonstrated who was the sharper wit by morris dancing home to Norfolk.

His subsequent account, Kemps Nine Daies VVonder, is an entertaining piece of self-promotion, but would hardly pass for an expeditionary report at the RGS. Foremost among many questionable elements is the fact that Kemp allowed himself plenty of days off for drinking, wenching, and/or putting his feet up. All in, his nine daies took about five weeks.

Tim, viewing this as the soft option, decided to cover the same 150 miles in nine days flat. Thus:

SATURDAY (beeing the first dayes iourney, etc). The Globe Theatre, 9 a.m. Tim, sporting a fashion best described as Late-Mediaeval Pimp, stands for photos with Japanese tourists before skipping off over the Millennium Bridge to a melodeon accompaniment from Dave Dunham, on loan from Woodside Morris Men. Dave’s other task is to count the shouts/gestures of ‘Wanker!’ as we pass through east London. (The tally only gets out of hand — as it were — when, in the badlands outside Stratford, Dave tells local revellers that he is their strippergram.)

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