Well, it comes to something when even the local vicar comments on how well everyone gets on. We should start an argument about something, or she’ll be out a job: anyone want to discuss how to start a Bampton dance….?!! On a less surreal note, our links with the illustrious Greensleeves Morris who host this annual event go back over many decades. So it is no wonder that once the dancing is over, the food and ale are spread before us and the jokes, old stories and competing memories come out that there is a spirit in the air as rich as any peat-soaked single malt.

It is a privilege to be invited to attend an event where we are welcomed not just by Greensleeves but by the whole village. This year, where the prolonged summer weather has led to it been contrasted with 1976, we may admit to the level of dancing occasionally wilting like the flowers in a window box but the pleasure was as ripe as ever. Leaving us, as I say, feeling rather chipper in Chipperfield