And the running of the deer

Secretly I think I prefer Boxing Day to its more gaudy and glitzy predecessor. It's a day which promises little and often delivers much as opposed to Christmas Day where I always feel the loss of that magic felt in childhood.

Today we went to Corfe Village square to watch a Mummer play. It's the first time I've seen one and I loved the mixture of tradition and bawdiness. A very light smattering of research later and I've found that, whilst it's a medieval tradition, the Mummer play we see today dates from the mid 17c and involves stock characters of King George, the Turkish night, Jolly Jack and a quack doctor who brings the dead to life. Getting to watch a performance lets you, for a moment, feel as if you are in Hardy's Wessex.















We looked at the history of Hardy's Mummer plays in Dorchester county museum where we met the Ooser. This creature, half man and half cow, was a popular sight at midwinter gatherings in 19c Dorset. The last one was lost sometime in the early twentieth century. I'm definitely going to try to find an excuse to dress up as an Ooser some day, maybe on some Hardy orientated dinner party.




Later on we went for a walk at the Arne nature reserve, famous for many Springwatch series. It has a huge population of sika deer and amazing views over Poole Harbour, the second largest natural harbour on earth after Sydney. The very small brown blobs in the photo below are sika - the iphone doesn't lend itself to wildlife photography. I've taken my son there on many Boxing days and have always felt refreshed mentally and physically after the excesses of the previous 24 hours.





I do hope that wherever you spent Boxing Day you had an equally lovely day.