Welcome to The Buzzard, the homepage and diary/magazine for Cry Havoc, Cotswold morris side from Botley in Oxford.

And welcome to your winter issue.

And so we enter a new decade, which promises to contain morris dancing, folk music sessions, and beer drinking ... so not much change from the last decade! Wouldn't have it any other way ...

This issue sees the introduction of a new feature - My Guitar - which will alternate with What's That Instrument. Here at Buzzard Towers we reckon you probably know what a guitar is, but you might not have realized just how many guitars there are in the ownership of members of Cry Havoc. Thanks to Barbara Payne for cajoling members into revealing all.

The weathermen say we are heading for a big freeze. Keep warm!

Ed

This issue 2.1.10

The West Berkshire Wassail

by Ed Pritchard and Barbara Payne
Tune: The Gloucester Wassail


Wassail, wassail all over the town
Our toast it is white and our ale it is brown
Our ale it is made by the West Berks brew’ry
With a West Berkshire brew we’ll drink to thee

So here’s to that Good Old Boy, dear Mr Chubbs
His Bitter is lauded throughout England’s pubs
Throughout England’s pubs the toast will go free
With a West Berkshire brew we’ll drink to thee

And here’s to the doctor, old Hexter by name
For Healing he’s earned justifiable fame
And with Wedding Ale, if married you’d be
With a West Berkshire brew we’ll drink to thee.

And here’s to the brewer and Helen his wife
Their beers will enrich every morris man’s life –
And a morris woman’s too – for all shall agree,
With a West Berkshire brew we’ll drink to thee.

And here’s to his copper and hopper and tun
Where Maggs’s Magnificent Mild is begun
And to his garage and the firkins within
Where he lets these jolly piss artists in

And here’s to the maid in the lily white kit
With a hanky to wave and a stick for to hit
With a tankard in hand of West Berkshire ale
She is come for to sing you our jolly wassail

Wassail, wassail all over the town
Our toast it is white and our ale it is brown
Our ale it is made by the West Berks brew’ry
With a West Berkshire brew we’ll drink to thee

My Guitar

Vikki Rose
I have an acoustic which was bought for me by an ex boyfriend who lo and behold worked in a guitar shop, and two electric guitars (one tuned down to drop D) left over from my time fronting a terrible grunge band in London. Both of them are Gibson's (although one is an Epiphone) and both are red.

Kate and John Keen
We have 2 guitars, John's is a Suzuki jumbo (0 - 60 in 3 seconds) he has just informed me he bought it in 1973 for £60!!!!!! He didn't part with that amount of money for my engagement ring 5 years later.......perhaps he thought the guitar was a better investment. He is somewhat of a closet guitarist but I have occasionally heard very good renditions of classical guitar music around midnight when he thought I was asleep.

Mine on the other hand was cheap and cheerful. I can't remember exactly when I bought it but it was some time in the early 70's and definitely cost less than a fiver. It survived all the knocks of student life, train journeys, camping trips etc. When plied with enough alcohol I occasionally sang and played at the college folk club (West Bretton now Yorkshire sculpture park), though usually pretended to be the next Joan Baez or Leonard Cohen in the privacy of my own room. On my last teaching practice I ended up replacing the guitar peripatetic teacher and always felt I was being paid under false pretences!
Having written this I have now dusted mine down, tuned it up and might even try and remember a few songs..........I wonder how much a new set of strings costs these days?

(Editor's Note: the picture of John playing his guitar was taken a few years ago!)