It wasn't practical to carry on, you tell yourself. With a job that meant you were missing about one practice in three, you weren't really getting the continuity that you needed from one week to the next. Yes, that's right. Continuity. That's exactly what the problem was. Wasn't it unfair on the side, as well, to have you disappearing for week after week? Yes. Of course.
But the little voice at the back of your mind admits another reason you gave up: dancing has never exactly been the greatest of your skills. And that was painfully evident in your morris dancing. Even a year and a half on from when you started, your head was still moving in the opposite direction to your body, and you were still colliding (and worse, apologising for colliding) with the other dancers. And those moments when a dance was named, and you weren't sure whether to bring out your hankies or reach for a stick, were still happening far too often.
Not that you regret a second of your 18 months as a morris dancer. You really enjoyed the camaraderie, and few hobbies would give you the chance to do some pub-bothering at Christmas, or dress up as a dead horse. And even if morris, as danced today, seemed to owe more to Victorian folklorists than anything more well-established, you still felt a certain awe at dancing the same dances that generations before you had done. Though, obviously, not quite as well as they'd danced them.
So you shove your morris kit in to a Tesco bag to give back to the side. In goes the baldrick, because it was always on loan, and in go the breeches as well, because short of a 'come as you are in the 17th century' fancy dress party, you can't see them coming in useful. The same goes for the ankle-length socks.
But you keep the hankies, because they're hankies. You also keep an immense amount of respect for Britain's 14,000 morris dancers, for having the guts, the initiative and the sheer bloody-mindedness to do something so out of step with everything, and for making it look so deceptively simple most of the time.
And, after much deliberation, you decide to keep the dog-collars.
Nine Days' Wonder 
5
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