Three men's morris. And two girls as well. Morris, that is.

"I am just a rung
And you are aiming high"
- Davey Crockett

From the tone of the quote, it sounds like I'm a bit down in the dumps. Far from it. I've had one of the coolest weeks of my life this last seven days or near abouts. Plenty to tell, and I'm quite sleepy at the moment so I might not get round to it all.

Brown Anna is living with us which is most excellent, and not just because it's nice to have a fellow vegetarian smoker in the house, but because, unlike me, she can look at my forlorn homebrew container that's been used as a surface for clutter for six months, and in a matter of hours a big 40 pint barrel of malty liquid with yeast floating on it is fermenting in our kitchen. She didn't even touch it, just raised one eyebrow in a quizzical manner and our kitchen went all microbrewery. Opening the tin was dramatic, however... not knowing what the contents would be, it was surprising to find a gloopy malty thick marmite substance. Although as Daniel Taylor found out, it doesn't taste much like marmite. Purchasing the required 'bag' of sugar along with household groceries, I returned to discover my tea had been spiked with said substance. Out came the bottle cleaning brush, as we thought we'd better start sterilising the equipment before all the ingredients ended up being used for the purposes of spiking. The instructions said "add yeast according to directions on packet." The packet said "Yeast". Actually, it didn't even say that, but merely had three letters that seemed to make no comprehensible Three Letter Acronym. (Or TLA, as some would say). But it looked like yeast so in it went. Putting the sterilising stuff in the barrel worked when we shook it, but when we tried to rotate the barrel to ensure total sterilisation we sterilised the floor. Forty pints of water at 25 degrees? Do they assume we have thermometers lying about? We had to guess on that one. But hopefully soon we will have plenty of ale to drink. If no-one else likes it we'll have to drink 20 pints each. But that'll make for quite an entertaining afternoon anyway. So it's a win win situation all in all.

I might have mentioned the falling off a barstool incident in the pub I work in already. If not, then I've just brushed over the major details, apart from minor elbow damage. However, what I don't think I mentioned is that apparently I skuttled across the floor and through my boss's legs? I don't really understand this. I have no memory of this happening. The mere idea of it is so entertaining, however, I'm prepared to think it did happen.

So on Thursday me and Anna and Rosie and Daniel Taylor and Tom went down to the Lion and Lobster to go have a pint of ale and watch some morris dancers. Daniel handed me something that I thought was a mint but turned out to be an ibuprofin. So I bit into it and spent the next two minutes spitting out beer and painkillers onto the floor because it tasted so horrible. Fortunately we were outside and I didn't put the morris dancers off their stride although I might have looked like a bit of a mentalist.

Now I don't think it was the drink that took us over, I think it was the power of the morris. We had only just arrived and were in quite a sober state as we chinked our glasses, eyes meeting, but something about bearded men waving handkerchiefs, wearing bells on their legs and moving in formation to accordion music hit us like a swing band. Oh, and that's without the sticks. These are proper hardcore morris men. With each crack as the sticks met we felt sympathy pain in our knuckles. Sticks were broken, thrown about, Morris dancers went flying through the air. We were hooked. This was incredble! After half an hour the Morris Dancers moved on to another pub, but we followed them. It was like a morris crawl.

As we walked from the Lion and Lobster to a quite-hard-to-find pub that it's worth the search, called the Conqueror, we witnessed an incredible sight. One of those bicycles that are quite flat to the ground, with one wheel at the back and two at the front, so the cyclist is very much reclined. Ridden by a morris man with a long ginger beard, clutching a pewter tankard full of ale. It was incredible.

More morris and sticks. Daniel went over and requested "something where you throw lots of sticks". This was Morris like I've never seen before. Almost up with the S&M leather lederhosen morris dancers that Anna Hell once saw, beating eachother with wet leather straps. Sticks flew through the air, sticks were broken, bells jingled, the accordion played for all it was worth.

Daniel Taylor got given a broken stick by the morris dancers and they asked him to join them. That would be so cool. We returned to the Lion and Lobster, ate baked potatoes, and returned home to identify dogs and quibble over Gala Pies.

So much more happened this week. But as my bed in St. Albans is quite soft, and my eyes are drooping like a Teacher-Collins patient, I think I should probably succumb to my body's weaknesses. Like bloody having to eat and stuff. What's the point? You're only going to have to poo it out again.

But yes. it was a good week. it was an interesting week.