Preserving the quaint traditions of olde Englande is no easy matter in Derbyshire, as Nick Graydon discovered when he attended the annual meeting of Ashover’s Worshipful Society of Mummers (motto ‘We are AWSOM’).
THE ‘ENTERER-IN’ was clearly not in the best of moods. The leader of the local troupe of Mummers, nattily dressed in a battered tricorn hat, bright red neckerchief, oversize yellow wellies and broken plastic cutlass, lost no time in announcing that there had been a number of ‘observations’ about the latest public performance which could not be overlooked…