DERT 2010 (Part 1)

Had a brief panic on Thursday evening when I put my kit for Dert into my rucksack and the bloody thing disintergrated. (To be fair, it's over 12 years old and was a cheap thing which has seen some hellish hard use so it's done pretty well). This had me venturing into town on Friday morning in search of a replacement where I discovered a new shop that has opened on Prince's Street which seems to have everything on offer at the moment. Managed to find a new rucksack for a very good price and also bought a self-inflating sleeping mat type thing to save weight and space when I head down to Oxford on the coach the next weekend.

Anyhow, random stuff sorted, I picked up everyone and down to Derby we headed. A boring but uneventful drive (and thank you to Neil for using his sat nav to find the registration venue) we got to the Brewery Tap in Derby at around 19.30, picked up our wristbands, t-shirts and (quite sweet) monkey keyrings (The resident group is Stone Monkey) and then headed off to the Rycote centre where we sleeping. Excitement set back in as we said hallo to Gaorsach who were also sleeping there (in their one enormous bed and matching slippers and pyjamas) and I tried to work out how to work the self-inflating matress which, helpfully, didn't come with instructions. We were all a little fascinated with it and although I was convinced that it was inflating not everyone else was. It was decided to leave it, meet up with the rest of Mons Meg and leave it to it's own devices. I had a very good night but don't remember that much of it due to drinking 4 pints (they were very nice) having not eaten very much and then tiredness from the drive and from not sleeping particularly well the past week or so hitting me like a brick. Anyhow, went back to the sleeping venue after closing time to find that the mat had pretty much inflated but decided to just finish it the rest of the way cause I wanted to sleep. (I would also just like to point out that the loos in the place were ridiculously high. My feet did not touch the floor when I sat down. I felt like I was 5!). Didn't sleep too much cause I kept waking up every half hour, partly cause that is, unfortunately, my normal sleeping pattern and partly cause I was just a little bit excited.

Saturday morning, I was exceedingly bouncy and it seemed to take ages for the rest of the side to get there. Watched a couple of the american teams (who were all in our venue too) practice and found the Tommy Toss one of the sides did very impressive.
Finally, all of our side met up and, better still, Kev had managed to get my new shoes soled for me! Not sure that putting them on for DERT was my best idea since it is a marked difference in how they feel to step in and the competition was probably not the best time to adapt to them but it was so nice to be wearing shoes that fitted!
It was also about this time that Trina pointed out that she'd forgotten to bring her light coloured bra and was stuck wearing her black one which was commented on by the judges last year. She remedied this by covering her black bra (and a lot of the toilet floor) in talc which covered the bra nicely but left me coughing everytime I went near her. Still, got to admire the ingenuity. The things we do for rapper!
Anyhow, we found our way down to the Flowerpot where we starting with a practice dance along with Sallyport and Star and Shadow who we were going round with. Practice dance went very well and it was great fun to watch the other sides (although Sallyport's song about spanking gnomes is going to stay with me for a while. Now with visuals, thanks to Andy!) before Dave from Stonemonkey (our erstwhile steward) herded us all together (and there's a comment about cats in there somewhere) and started us walking to our first competitive pub, The Brewery Tap. (He may have tried to give us instructions for the day at some point but we were all too busy mocking him and making jokes to actually listen. We're rapper dancers, it's what we do. Dave, however, was great and happily repeated all of what he'd just told us throughout the day at regular intervals when we asked.
There wasn't much room to get in to watch the dancers at the Brewery Tap so I went outside and watched Sallyport through the window behind the judges (and I may have amused myself by waving at them every so often) Got asked what was going on by a group of lads who were passing by. They were a little non-plussed by my explanation and then Sallyport's tommy ran out into the street to try and get them to come inside but I think he scared the hell out of them!
Our first dance was OK (even though I let go of a sword in Dambusters. This was mostly because I suddenly found out I had an infected cut on my finger by the shooting pain that ran up my arm when I gripped the sword but I got it back without any bother and Neil managed to get in a yellow card joke) and lots of us went out to try and put off Black Swan through the window while Neil and Andy went to raid Gregs. I did like the comment from one of Sallyport wondering if one of Black Swan had his phone on him...

Anyhow, lunch eaten, we set off for the next pub, the Alexandra. This pub had an incredibly slippy floor which really slowed our drive and knocked our confidence a bit but the dance went reasonably well. We got to watch Pengwyn dance and they looked on good form.

It was a bit of a lengthy walk to the next pub (The Falstaff) but the weather was gorgeous and the pub was a little gem. Full of odd things and weird fretwork. The ladies loos, though, were the real eyeopener and, quite frankly, the nicest loos I have ever seen in a pub (or anywhere else for that matter!) They were decked out in green and purple with chiffon curtains (and purple loo seats!) with a kind of posh glass dish as a hand basin. The Star and Shadow lasses and myself were so enthusiastic about them that most of the Sallyport lads went into check! Really enjoyed dancing here. Nice floor and good atmosphere and just generally fun.

After the long hike back into town, we ambled along to our next venue which was the stage at the Guildhall. We'd been hearing some horror stories about it all day but, I think by the time we got there, there were a few more people in the audience and our 3 sides had been supporting each other fairly enthusiastically throughout the day so I actually enjoyed that dance as well. We stayed on for a bit to watch Sallyport trying to make Phil and Aubs laugh while they were being interviewed by some lass from the BBC (And her boom operator who was carrying either an overweight ferret or a tribble moving at speed. We never quite decided which) for a program they're doing on folk dance. Ian got some brilliantly funny pictures of their faces while they were doing this. Hopefully they'll be up on the Mons Meg site at some point.

Our last dance was in The Flowerpot again and, again, it was a really good atmosphere. We had one fairly minor mishap when Trina tripped in the spin, hit the floor and was dragged across the floor for a while a la Jean Torville in Bolero, but she did with style, was helped back to her feet and went back into the spin as if nothing had happened! Talk about recovery!

After a quick practice of Winlaton outside in the beergarden, we headed off to the Quad for the Traditional competition. Would probably have been a lot more nervous about this (since Winalot didn't exactly go well in our last practice) if I hadn't been mildly tipsy at this point. We were also busy laughing because Trina had, for reasons best known to herself, run through the fountain in the square and had, as a result, a fantastically see through wet shirt. Fortunately she had a spare shirt with her although I still think the wet version would have garnered us more points with the judges! Anyhow, it was lovely to see how other sides did Winlaton and our dance was probably the best we've ever done it. I think we had one minor mistake that was barely noticable and we recovered immediately from and the lock held together (and my shoulder is still attached with no pain. Although, this too could have been thanks to the alcohol)

This was followed by tea (which was a surprisingly nice cottage pie for me) and then back to the Guildhall to catch the rest of the evening dances. We'd missed a lot of them since we'd been doing the traditional but we caught Bristol Rapper (who had number 5 tommying from within the set, mostly by expression alone and was hilarious!) and we got to see the Kingsmen who were very good and you had to love the ABBA calling on song.

Can't really remember who won what except that Black Swan won the music, High Spen won the Traditional and The Kingsmen won best character, the Premier and the Steve Marris. Well deserved.