Geeklawyer spent last week­end in Otley York­shire with Harry vis­it­ing a friend and occa­sional Geeklawyer com­menter James. The Otley Folk Fes­ti­val was the, thin, excuse for a mega drink­ing ses­sion. While many towns claim to have the high­est num­ber of pubs per head of pop­u­la­tion, Otley can back it up. We con­sumed our body­weight in alco­hol (Ruthie will no doubt have a pri­vate tantrum about that).

Geeklawyer’s prej­u­dices about folk music proved to be poorly based: we saw ter­rific musi­cians and not a one of them had a fin­ger in his ear. Geeklawyer can’t pre­tend to have become a fan of folk music but now has one less prej­u­dice to wield.

He even danced a Celdlih (pro­nounced ‘cay­ley’) with a degree of ele­gance that stunned all those who watched: it was a shame he had to do so with Harry — hav­ing just turned down some hot totty who had taken the oppor­tu­nity of a ‘ladies excuse me’ to beg him to dance.

But even more improb­a­bly Geeklawyer dis­cov­ered a bizarre fas­ci­na­tion for mor­ris danc­ing: a recon­structed folk tra­di­tion unrea­son­ably lam­pooned but which is, in real­ity, a cun­ning device to evade drink­ing byelaws using cul­tural his­tory excuses. Nice.

Exam­ples would be the Riv­ing­ton mor­ris danc­ing team, a fas­ci­nat­ing and impres­sively coor­di­nated bunch and oth­ers that Geeklawyer videoed and put them on his Youtube page.

On a sour note, Jame’s ini­tial act of worship:

Worship

Degen­er­ated into a mur­der attempt when he attempted to beat Geeklawyer off the side of Ilk­ley Moor.

James murder attempt on Geeklawyer