Cidertini's with Mexican Dave and the Morris Men Massive

We are in deepest Worcestershire and it all feels decidedly like the script for Leaving Las Vegas - if they upped and moved the whole gig to a strange village on the river Severn.

Johnny Depp has been replaced by my buddy Simon and a gang of us wearing Sombrero's, thick Mexican moustaches and drinking "Cidertini's" from straws. We invented the "Cidertini" after a few hours drinking local homebrew cider in the village. It's your standard vodka, scrumpy cocktail for the more refined yokel drinker with access to Martini glasses and plenty of free time. The straw is a necessity, otherwise our rather dashing gaucho moustaches get too soggy and eventually fall into your drink.

The kids - all nine or ten of them (headcounts are over-rated) are in their element. They also have fake moustaches to go with their cowboy hats and neckerchiefs and we are busy bashing the bejaney out of a pinata that we have hung from a variety of trees in the garden of the house we are renting. At some point, for reasons unknown, Simon is about 50 foot up the tree. A lone Mexican in sombrero and multi-coloured poncho. But this does not give him any additional Pinata hitting abilities.

We eventually kill the pinata and play a few games of hide and seek and 52 bunker (Blocky 123, twenty twenty - take your pick depending on your playground geography). The garden is about 4 acres apparently, which means there are plenty of places to hide. I team up with Caitlin, mainly because the adults have decided that playing hide and seek next to a massive thirty foot wide fast flowing river is a recipe for disaster otherwise, and we enjoy a number of Blocky 123 victories. I forgot just how much I liked playing stupid games in a field.

Within the grounds, there are chickens and a duck with a weird round helmet "growth / ball" on his head. As the scrumpy kicks in, we surmise that he must be some sort of maverick stunt duck, or a member of a strange duck cult. We find some plastic eggs in their hen house which really confuses us. The kids want to cook them (the eggs not the chickens) but we put them back. Being city folk, we wonder if the chickens lay more if they see plastic eggs but cannot be bothered to google it. Let nature have it's little plastic egg mysteries...

We walk along by the river, taking note that the "high flood" mark against the garage in town is about six foot above our heads. The garage itself comes straight out of Deliverance - dilapidated ancient pick-up trucks rusting out front. All it needs is a man with a banjo and a small child whose mumma is his pappy's sister and we are there.


We pass a small tudor house - all wattle and daub and rustic timbers. There is a blue plaque up against it (I love a blue plaque). Apparently, Oliver Cromwell stopped here for a quick beer / coffee / chat with the locals after the Battle of Upton. I love this place. This place is a timewarped gem. This is the village from midsummer murders, this is the village from Hot Fuzz. This is England at it's most uniquely insane.

We hope it doesn't rain to a Biblical level as we wander into the world's largest ever Morris fest. We had no idea that we were at the centrepoint ground zero of "Morrissing" when we booked the place in Upton upon Severn. But we are. And it is absolutely delightfully bonkers.

The village has about five ancient 16th century pubs along the riverside and high street. Ye Olde Anchor...the Swan... the Little Upton Muggery. Outside each pub are what looks like the equivalent of "patched" biker gangs armed with wooden baseball bats (cunningly disguised as Morris sticks) and metal tankards for ale clasped to the side of their outfits by caribiners. Imagine what would happen if you crossed all the Sisters of Mercy, Hawkwind and Fairport Convention fans in England, exposed them to the hallucinatory effects of ergot poisoning (this happened alot in medieval farming communities back in the day) gave them access to several barrels of real ale and cider and let them make their own costumes, songs and dances up.

The effect is staggeringly mental and a heap of fun. There is a Morris parade through the village which is interrupted by a hefty woman in a Nissan Micra who takes a wrong turn and nearly takes out the "Dartmoor Border Morris" team mid dance. A tense three point turn ensues which threatens to ruin the vibe of the Morris group led by a tree (yes a tree).

By the river, the kids are mesemerised by the Morris dance-offs (I kid you not! They were awesome) and within a few hours all our children were shaking their plastic Mexican maraccas and banging drums in a giant hypnotic Trad session in the Swan pub. Literally, the music seemed to whirl and carry on for ever, like the pied piper leading everyone towards ultimate oblivion.

We eventually dragged the kids free from the Piped Pipers clutches and headed back to our pad for more fun and games. Needless to say, this ended with Simon, Sanjib and I sitting in the hot-tub with our recently purchased metal drinking tankards (full to the brim with Cider), watching "Kung Fury" - a high quality movie about a Miami cop travelling through time to prevent Adolf Hitler from getting to power. Except his cop partner is a dinosaur called "Triceracop" and his main help comes from Thor and some vikings.

We leave the crazy of the village behind and return to the reality of school runs and homework on Tuesday. The bank holiday truly felt like a wildly wacky and wonderful diversion from reality.

Today we go to the zoo. The sun is splitting the stones and the lion's for once can sit out and sunbathe. We have our picnic in the "secret" picnic spot by the Chinese garden (no - we did't eat it in the red panda enclosure).

And when we get home we fill up the new paddling pool and the kids go crazy. First thing they do is stick the plastic slide INTO the pool. Then they line it up with the climbing frame slide to make some sort of assault course and then they roll in the "grass that has now become mud" until they look like swamp people. Literally, they look like the kind of street urchins you see on Oliver Twist.

They shower, I BBQ some chicken, I warn them not to roll in the mud in the garden because they just had a shower. They jump off the wendy house into the mud in the garden. I give up. And Sarah pours me a Gin and tonic. The sun is shining, I just burnt my thumb on the hot coals in the BBQ (again) and we are listening to the 8th rendition of the Jurassic Park theme tune on the speakers in the garden. I never new it had been covered by so many many many instrumentalists... despite no subliminal messages from DJs Fintan and Declan at all... for some reason we elect to watch Jurassic Park the movie before bed time.

I'll let you know how it goes...