The Saturday after Easter. The Saturday after we’d set sail from Cropredy. Must be Oxford Folk Weekend, and as usual, SWMBO and the rest of Jackstraws Morris had been invited to dance. But – unlike last year – the weather was warm and sunny. No snow. No biting wind. No having to dance indoors with the dinosaurs…

And thankfully, no huge backlog of boats trying to get onto the Thames, and no trying to keep mooring pins in a bank with the consistency of warm butter.

Our friend Sue – of Jackstraws and Rockhoppers – was staying over like last year, and arrived from the station just in time to go dancing. Apparently we have to have some pictures, so those of a nervous disposition should look away now…

Here they are, as good as ever, in Broad Street, just outside Balliol College.

And later on, on an interestingly down-hill pitch, they even managed to get some passers by to join in, even if the wee lad who didn’t speak English seemed a bit bemused.

And where else but Oxford would you stumble onto a pub sessions with three nyckelharpas, a viola, the smallest portable harmonium ever seen, and an Arabic looking gentlemen playing a black-skinned banjo, as well as the more usual accoutrements?

After dancing all day, the ladies were tired, so we retired – as last year – to  a Lebanese restaurant just across the canal in Jericho, for some nice Lebanese food, and some nice Lebanese wine too (courtesy of Serge Hochar – it’s a good job we didn’t know he was now “the late…” or we might have had to raise another glass or two, which would have been a bad move).