A quick write-up of Saturday’s wassail in Hurstpierpoint, which was without a kernel of a doubt one of the most enjoyable wassails I’ve done.

And I’ve done a lot of wassails.

This one was organised by our choir leader and nearby-Hassock resident Jo Burke. It was very kind of her to schedule it for a day I could make, perhaps in penance for making me spend the day on the studio on Walthamstow Wassail Sunday. [1]

Hurstpierpoint is a posh-seeming village on the other side of the ridge of chalk that protects Brighton from Surrey. It’s a nice place with good people, but also suffers a busy road, 4x4s and ex-urbanites cosplaying a country life within easy reach of their coke dealers.

The pub where we were to gather was the Hop Tub, not the hot tub as we had all hoped. Imagine singing for the bees and apple trees while in a bikini.

It was a nice pub, with craft beer and a friendly landlord called Dan, who had married into a Scottish family of extras in the original Wicker Man.

That must have made his Christmases interesting, but still might not have prepared him for the madness that had descended on his premises. Hog-nutting mummers, trad singers in fairy-lighted antlers, human-sized hares, sea shanty practitioners, a solo morris dancer called Craig: all folk enthusiast life was here.

Jo had been teaching some wassails to locals all morning at the village hall, so we had a sizeable gang of hangers on and audience members. We sang Malpas Wassail, a local dog joining in, and then set off towards the orchard, singing a follow-me song and, my own personal case, helping the giant hare, who couldn’t see out of his mask very well and was also three sheets to the wind already.

The old orchard took in folk singing and dancing in a circle, surrounding the mature trees in a human chain, before processing to the new orchard half a mile away, singing all the while, accompanied by fiddle and flute.

Half way, we stopped for Craig to do his thing. I had become Jo’s fiddle keeper, a very important role which I concentrated hard on. It felt like being a roadie.

At the new orchard, we gathered around young trees growing rare Sussex varieties of apple. Ruth did an excellent narrative poem, and some kids were called forward for the toasting and apple-cidering of the trees, as well as the screaming and banging of various sticks and pots to scare aware the spirits and help ensure a good harvest later on in the year.

The skies were cold and clear. Jupiter was near the shining moon, and Venus and Mars were also very much in evidence.

The walk back to the pub was a happy joy, and after chips and more beer came the mummer’s play, with Jo playing the role of witch doctor.

By this point, I was extremely happy and slightly merry. I’d made new folky friends, talked plenty of nonsense, and the whole day had taken on the ambience of a mysterious fever dream.

There was still time for shanties, before we all realised we were beyond the hope of taxis, and walked through the shadows and freezing streets back to Hassocks station and home.

[1] “Where the fuck are you,” came one message from an attendee there in E17. When I explained: “remember the organiser’s helper-child? He’s now a 16 year old goth with a girlfriend”