Boudicca's Bright Fire 29th September 2018

I was late marking Autumn Equinox this year, but with good reason. I spent that day dancing with Boudicca Border Morris in Bury St Edmunds. We rattled the streets and shook off the cold that threatened. It was my first Day of Dance, and I sincerely hope it will not be my last.

Learning Border Morris has been the best move I’ve made in years. With nine months of practice behind us Boudicca Border Morris just held its first AGM to formalise the side and going forward fill the required roles. I’m now an apprentice co-Squire! Responsible, it seems for ensuring the right people dance in their best positions when we are out and about. With my experience of working with volunteers and teaching in miscellaneous places, I think I can do that. Orchestrating dancing warriors. Hmmmm. No pressure!!

Earlier this summer a bunch of us Boudicca dancers built a cob pizza oven at Orchard Barn. There was an efficiency and collaboration in the build that boded well. The oven shape was formed with damp sand kept in place with wet newspaper. Five batches of cob was stomped to perfection and applied within two hours by our talented tribe (ages from 5 to 59).

The top coat of clay render was made and shaped two weeks back. It’s embellished with a wheel which serves to remind us of where we are in the Wheel of the Year and places Boudicca’s chariot centrally on (or should that be in?) the oven. There are spirals to remind us of her Celtic roots, and spears to remember us of her warrior spirit. (Boudicca  stood up to the Romans and pursued  her right to land bequeathed  her by husband Prasutagus and he was the ruler of the Iceni people of East Anglia.) Suffice to say, there is something of the spirit of Boudicca in our pizza oven!

This morning I dug out the mound of sand that formed the oval oven. With just one match I ignited the inaugural fire in the oven’s belly. Ash shavings from batten dressing roared riotously away. I axed down Sweet Chestnut shingles that hadn’t made the roof grade and grabbed a handful of Oak peg templates too wobbly to make framing pegs.

Boudicca’s first fire was a fabulous one. It burned hot and smoke free. I rounded up three floor bricks and repurposed them as a door. That slowed the fire and built up the heat. Within thirty minutes the oven was ready for the first pizza. Crunchy. Cheesy. Homemade. Satisfying. Food to feed the ancestral spirit - or so it seemed, and so it was.

On queue the tribe rolled in. Boudicca Border Morris of course. What better way to mark the Equinox. Fire, pizza and tribe.

First firing of Boudicca's Pizza oven at Orchard Barn. Yummy on so many levels!