Dick the Morris Dancer and his Mangleworzel

The Half Moon attracts some interesting types. Calling in tonight for a pint I found myself chatting to Dick the Morris Dancer. His first question was whether I played chess. 'Badly,' I replied, 'but yes'.

"Don't suppose you happen to be carrying a chess set on you, by any chance?" he asked next. Sadly, I'm not in that habit, but then he explained that he'd come in for a game with a friend who had stood him up. Undeterred, we went on to chat about his retirement project, which involves him travelling throughout England documenting folk traditions which he hopes to publish in a book before he dies. He's up to about 250 and thinks he'll stop somewhere between 275 and 300. That's a lot of folk stuff to carry around in one head. I was impressed.

I was even more impressed by his word for the day - Mangleworzel. A mangelworzel is, apparently, rather like a gourd, but orange in colour, a bit like a pumpkin. Once upon a time, somewhere in England (Devon, I think he said) the women of a certain village decided they were fed up with the blokes going off to secret meetings to drink plonk, particularly because the menfolk tended to take all the lanterns with them. Resolved to give their husbands a collective piece of their minds, they grabbed all the mangleworzels they could find, hollowed them out and put candles in them and set out up the hill. The men, seeing eerie orange lights approaching them in the night, promptly decided the devil was after them, and fled.

Having shared several such tales, Dick decided that it was too late for chess, and headed home. He jammed his Morris hat on his head - a battered straw number adorned with a riot of fake flowers that looked totally at odds with his grizzled hair and straggly beard - poked some music, his tobacco and a roll of loo paper back into his bag, and set off into the night.

He was loads more entertaining than the pair of drunks I was left with in the bar...