The village hobby

Work. It should nourish the soul. Honest toil should result in a feeling of warm satisfaction and cold beer as success is celebrated in the traditional fashion at the end of a day when, thanks to your endeavours, the world is left a little bit better, with another shed erected, another suit exquisitely tailored or another poodle clipped into an amusing shape, than it was that morning.

Because there are people for whom their employment produces a sense of fulfilment. Sometimes they do something useful, like boat building or setting firework displays to music, sometimes what they appear to contribute to society is rather harder to define, but it gets them on the front of glossy magazines (although not always the ones that are just about glossy celebrities, one can imagine that even the most assured celebrity might wonder about their path in life if they are sharing the front page of a magazine with the story of a tragic teen who ate so much KFC they can only leave the house on a flatbed, through the wall). Getting paid for something that you actually enjoy doing is surely what everyone who has ever toiled aspires to.

Unfortunately, there's not a lot of money in sitting slumped in front of the telly flicking up and down the channels and wondering if the are any more wotsits left in the cupboard. Also, as a career choice, it looks poor on a CV if you want to progress to, for instance, flying a jet.

This is why people indulge in hobbies, because to stop yourself going mad with frustration at work, you can develop a socially accepted form of mania in your spare time. While many hobbies can be private and low-key, such as collecting antique prosthetic limbs, cutting locks of hair from the people in front of you on the bus without them knowing, or getting wasted on Lambrini in your front room while watching Mama Mia on DVD, again, on a Saturday night, other have a more public face.

And it doesn't get much more public than Morris Dancing. Lots of blokes running around in circles letting out the occasional whoop and thwacking sticks around, all the while jingling the bells attached to their ankles. Morris Dancing has for years attracted the professional classes. Bank managers, accountants, the more refined sort of sex pest, dentists and so on all feel the need to jump about while trying to convince people that they are upholding a folk generation that goes back centuries and are not simply a group of men with miserable home lives who cannot take up the traditional hobby of the unhappily married - angling - because of an irrational fear of tench.

The only hobby more public than Morris Dancing is, possibly, being in a pipe band. Every year the UN meets to try and have the bagpipe classified as a weapon and every year the Scots play the cultural card, that if anyone votes 'aye' they will stand outside their house and play 'Flower of Scotland' until the end of recorded time. The's a reason the bagpipe was used to lead men into battle. It bloody terrifies me and I know that it's essentially a device for reproducing the sound of music strained through a cat. If you were facing a Highland regiment of angry transvestites led by men with wailing demons under their arms, bricking it into the trees is an acceptable option.

Of course those days are long gone (south of the Tweed) and now you have recreational bagpipe playing (I know, but in a world where people get enemas for fun, I've stopped trying to make sense of this sort of thing) where presumably normal people gather together and try and make a sound not unlike a pig being sucked through a jet engine, for fun.

And in truth, confronted by the sheer enthusiasm of those that indulge in folk dancing and folk music, their obvious enjoyment is infectious. I mean, who can fail to adore a bloke with bells on his ankles, or a chap who has a waterproof made especially for his kilt? Weatherproofing for authentic celtic weather? Now that's attention to detail.