Article for 2012 Jul 13
This article is not in a series.
2012
2012 Jul
Jul 13 Fri
As it is a Friday 13th (as everyone seems to be pointing out), I was predicting some-thing bad to happen this evening. And indeed, it did. For I had been asked to attend a barn-dance at a local school-hall. I am dreadful at dancing, am not a big fan of barns (though I do like barn owls, barn swallows, and barnacle geese, neither of which I saw), and was only attending for the free food.
Incidentally, the free food was served with plastic cutlery as flimsy as my argument for attending the barn-dance.
Anyway, the dances were spectacular: spectacularly bad. We got terribly tangled up in the Fisherman’s Reel, the do-si-do became a don’t-see-don’t, and the Flying Scotsman groaned to a halt. I am not exactly surprised.
I attribute my lack of dancing ability as hereditary. My parents were at the barn-dance also; my dad never dances without the traditional Scotch attire (by which I mean whisky), and my mum is just embarrassing, even when she’s sober. I therefore think it fortunate that I never had to dance with them. I didn’t even have to dance on the same side of the room with them.
The first partner I did have to “dance” with was a six-year-old boy whose primary school we were in. He was actually pretty good at dancing, making me look worse by comparison. “Have danced with a six-year-old” is probably not a line to put on my CV.
For the second dance, I couldn’t find a better partner, so had to dance with a sixteen-year-old nerd with an asymmetry in his body manifesting itself as two left feet. His dancing was adequate, if I say so myself. (I was dancing on my own.)
My dancing was superb when compared to my next partner. A forty-year-old woman who was already inebriated. We soon became known as “the drunk ‘n’ Duncan”, when we caused even more disarray by some-how turning left instead of right, thus ending up fifty feet from our proper position. I’m surprised any-one noticed.
We still had another three acts-of-havoc-accompanied-by-music to get through.
I swapped partners.
Even so we found that we can’t, can’t do a cancan; the subsequent square-dance was distinctly rhomboid; and the final dance, namely the “I want to be near you”, could be more accurately described as the “I want to be sitting down watching telly far away from this mayhem”.
I’m just glad that no ambulances were needed, no parents of mine were required to dance with me, and no dodgy photographs were taken of me dancing. Although...