Rain???? Wimps, all of you. I had a slightly surreal experience playing mandolin with a Morris side a few years ago. It was one of the dancers birthday, and there was a 'bit of a do' in the local pub, high up in the Staffordshire Moorlands. It turned out that the pub was too small to stage the specially written dance (a surprise for the birthday boy)so we tried to stage it in the car park. Not a good idea; this was 11pm in early February, and the car park was covered in sheet ice. No one had their ice spikes or crampons with them, so we danced on the only ice-free place; the freshly-gritted road outside the pub. By now there was a blizzard, to the extent that the musicians couldn't really see the dancers, so we were working from the sound of feet, sticks and the occasional groan as someone fell over. The best bit was the look on the face of a passing motorist...
Tim