Junior maypole dancing

 

Seeing it's May I was starting to think about what kinds of things I used to do around this time of year and one of the things that stuck in my mind was school maypole dancing

While that  picture wasn't taken it my school, it was taken at a school in Gloucestershire of the Victorian type like ours, actually, how the Maypole is set out is very very similar to how we did it.

Those who had two left feet were selected as 'ballast' to hold the maypole down, the uniform was similar except the boys nearly always had shorts on and in alternate boy/girl pairings we'd dance weaving in and out creating the plait you can see from the top of the pole downward.

One difference is we have what in England you'd call 'Pumps'  a cotton with rubber soled gym type shoe that you had to clean and polish before the public performance with matching three-quarter length socks.

I use to take me ages to polish and whiten mine!

I was pretty good at it actually having a good ear for the tunes we danced to so we kept in time with the music as well as each other that does help.