As a Morris Dancer, I danced at May Day Dawn for a whole load of years, at university with Yare Valley Morris on Mousehold Heath, then in Guildford with Pilgrm Morris at St. Martha’s. There was a break in all of this when I was in Thailand, back in 199x. I still managed to see in the dawn though, in a slightly different manner.
I was staying in Sudokai, a town with a pretty old ruined temple complex, and I’d decided that was the place to see the sun rise. I asked the owner of the guest house how to get there in time, and he told me of a bus (well, a large tuk-tuk style vehicle) used by locals to get to work, and miraculously I managed to both get up and catch it. I wandered into the complex in the not-quite dark, and found a raised area with a Buddha where I thought to wait for sunrise. All well and good. Save, that is, for the groups of stray dogs who also lived in the area. I’ve never liked dogs, and they’ve never liked me. My dislike had been intensified far earlier on in my trip when a dog decided to run out of a house I was walking past, bite me on my leg and then run back in. So there I was in the dim light of the early morning, totally alone save for a small group of dogs of unknown nature, hunger and health. Naturally I wanted to not be bitten or generally harassed, and the solution that came to me was to whirl a length of chain around me to force them to keep their distance. Looking back, I’m very happy that I didn’t hit any of them, but at the time I’m sure I was more concerned with my own well being. I really don’t quite know why I was carrying a length of chain with me though…