On Boxing Day morning, my family and I made our traditional journey to the little village of Broadway in Worcestershire.

When I say traditional, what I actually mean is that going to Broadway is the traditional way for our household to distract themselves from the fact that we are not having a traditional Boxing Day party at our house, because all the people who we traditionally used to invite to it are now sadly deceased.  Every year when we take the Christmas decorations down out of the loft, we stumble across the little place names which I once made out of red cardboard and silver pen, and flick through them nostalgically, recalling those days when our little table used to be so full it was impossible to cut your pork pie in half without doing severe elbow damage to your neighbour.  It is impossible not to mentally imagine how the same table would look now, and inevitably, your eyes are drawn to the gaps which would be in it and the place names which would no longer need to be used.  One day, I hope that there will again be Boxing Day parties in my house, with sausage rolls and quiche and Sara Lee Lemon Meringue Pie.  But that day cannot, I think, come until my sister and I are able to populate the table with our own families.  Until that day arrives, Boxing Day is a day to be spent as far away from home as possible.

If you were under the misapprehension that it is in America, I will clarify at once that Broadway is a picturesque little village in the Cotswolds which gives the impression of having stepped right off the lid of an old-fashioned chocolate box.  It is impossible to imagine a high street which looks more typically English, with its beautiful buildings of sandy Cotswold stone, and whilst this does mean that Broadway gets its fair share of tourist attention, the atmosphere has not yet been spoiled (to the extent, say, in nearby Bourton-on-the-Water) by excessive volumes of snapping tourists.

Broadway is a pleasant place to be on a Boxing Day morning in any case.  Not a quiet place, mind; Boxing Day is arguably the busiest day in its social calendar, despite the fact that next to no coach trips are run, and he who wants a parking space needs to be there by ten thirty as we were.  We went to have a cup of coffee in the teashop, where I must add they serve the most delicious cakes (proper, English cakes), while we waited for things to get going.

By eleven the warm-up act, in the form of six Morris Dancers had arrived and was arranging itself alongside the village green.  There are so few customs and traditions which are truly English, in comparison to other countries which seem to have such a rich folk heritage, but I guess that Morris Dancing is one of them.  It is such a bizarre and curious affair, a group of grown men attaching bells to their socks and skipping in circles whilst waving handkerchiefs above their heads, that I suspect that most of us avoid mentioning it to foreigners who ask if there is an English national dance.  Nevertheless, Broadway has Morris Dancing at its peculiar best. 

The dancers were accompanied by a very able accordion player and, whilst chiefly elderly, were able to skip with a stamina far in excess of what I myself could have managed.  The traditional dancers were aided by some more entertaining sidekicks; one man was enclosed in a brown cloak in such a way as he was denied the use of his arms, whilst on his upper half he was wearing a furry donkey-head which extended at least two feet in the air above his own natural head.  He presumably had some pagan significance, and bopped about in the middle as best as he could in such a restrictive get-up whilst everyone else admiringly waved handkerchiefs around him.  A second man, who was kitted out with a slightly smaller animal head which looked more like the wolf out of Red Riding Hood, and armed with a riding whip, skipped around outside of the shape the other dancers were making, randomly striking them on the backside whenever the fancy took him.  This strange frivolity aside, some of the dancing was genuinely worth watching; there were several fighting dances traditional to local villages, which involved the dancers fencing aggressively with big wooden sticks.  They did this with great gusto, making wild battle cries in the appropriate places, and although the one Japanese lady who had strayed into the midst of this furore seemed temporarily distressed, it was all in aid of the air ambulance, which is a very worthy cause

As the Morris Dancing drew to a close, signs that the main entertainment of the day was imminent became increasingly obvious.  The farewell song of the dancers was drowned out by the incessant clip clopping as horse after horse made its way down the high street.  Whole family groups arrived together, the adults at the front on magnificently tall beasts and the offspring following behind on their ponies.  There was a sense of excited anticipation in the air, heightened by the arrival of the local police.  It was nearly time for the Boxing Day Hunt to commence.

Now in writing this I would like to make a few things clear.  First off, that I am not a traditional hunt supporter.  I live in an industrial conurbation, I don’t own a pair of green wellies, and I am thoroughly terrified of both horses and dogs in close proximity.  I do not support wanton cruelty to any being, and as a pacifist am hardly a fan of violent sport.  I probably have only an imperfect understanding of the arguments for and against hunting with hounds, although in my opinion it is important the fox population be properly controlled to reduce the incidence of anything unthinkable happening to ducks, and anyone who has the energy to devote to sustained protest might do better to adopt a cause along the lines of preventing genocide in Sudan as opposed to preventing dogs killing foxes.  It might seem strange, then, that for the last four years I have turned out to support the hunt.

Personally, I have no comprehension of why a person would want to participate in a hunt.  I also have no comprehension of why a person would want to smoke in a restaurant or engage in anal sex or do a bungee jump.  That does not mean I think those activities should be illegal, and for me the hunting issue is one of personal freedom.  If a bunch of toffs want to dress up in funny coats and cavort across the countryside on horseback in pursuit of a nasty piece of vermin which farmers need to be killed anyway, who is Tony Blair to legislate that they cannot?  They are not reducing the population of an endangered species, and a certain amount of social good arises from the employment provided by hunting-related businesses.  So, the fox gets stressed out when it’s being chased by a dog.  Is it less stressful to lay a trap for it and have it chew off its own paw in an attempt to escape?  Is it more stressful for the fox to be chased by a dog than for chickens to be attacked by said fox in the dead of night?  Is it worse than the stress a fish suffers when caught by an angler, or a bird when shot at by Prince Harry?  Animal rights arguments leave me cold.  If a person’s upbringing and personal preference mean that hunting appeals to them as a hobby then I regard that as their own personal business, and their own personal business is not something which should be within the scope of government legislation.  To my mind, any government which starts to legislate on people’s business has already started down a slippery slope which leads away from democracy.

And that is why, if I am not exactly in favour of hunting, I would certainly never vote against it.  In addition to which, horses are really rather beautiful creatures when they are not trying to eat you, and the sight of a pack of foxhounds tearing through such an attractive village on a crisp December morning is really quite glorious.  Is this real life?  It bears no relation to my perception of it, and perhaps for that reason is the best conceivable distraction.

Tags: Christmas, hunting, Morris Dancers

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 29th, 2007 at 6:34 pm and is filed under Holidays and outings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.