Time to rest?

Friday 30^th November

We put the clocks forward another hour overnight. Not enough time to sleep, especially when I had to be up and breakfasted by the midday dance class! I managed. I have to set my priorities, after all.

Today’s lesson was tango. It was well taught, though I think the professionals chose the wrong steps to teach us. The first bracket had 8 beats while the second bracket only had 6 beats. When we string it together and try it to music on the dance floor, what will happen in those other 2 beats? Perhaps we should have been taught to do the second section twice in a row?

After a quick lunch in the Lido buffet restaurant with Trevor (while Peggy and Chris had a slow lunch in the restaurant) I returned to my room for a slow afternoon and a bit of a rest.

The daily programme includes dance practice to recorded music between dinner and the show. Tonight the ballroom was in use by sequence dancers, so the latin and ballroom dancing was upstairs in Hemispheres, the night club. For those who are looking for a cast list, two dancers in front are two of the dance hosts, Ron and Woody. The lady on the right is an example of what can happen on the dance floor. Later in the evening she was dancing with someone who’s a bit of an exhibitionist and she tripped and fell. Doctor Trevor rushed to the rescue and made the decision that at her age (83) she needed an x-ray as the foot was swelling badly, even with ice, and pulled rank and insisted that someone be sent up from the medical centre. He suspects a broken metatarsal. For someone who has been dancing all her life, and still continues even with scoliosis, this is really upsetting.

Chris came for a short time. See the wonderful chandelier!

While the others went to the show (violinist) I did odd jobs and got back to the ballroom in time to stake seats for us. It really is difficult to get enough seats together after the show, made more difficult by the fact that we never know quite how many will join us. The tables and chairs start off neatly, but are soon disarranged so that everyone can see the floor. Just imagine me pulling two tables together, gathering six chairs and staking each one out with a camera or dancing shoe or handbag. It’s the only way to stop others pinching them!

Cast list again: Trevor and Chris in the first photo, Allan, Peggy (Chris’s mother) and Pam in the second photo. That’s the six singles from our table. There are two couples who come occasionally, but we six are the hard-core dancers.

Tonight seemed to focus on the quickstep for me. The floor was not as crowded and when I danced with Trevor (several times) and Woody (once) we managed to virtually fly around the floor taking lovely long steps, with lots of locks and spin turns. In contrast my quickstep with Ron consisted of tiny steps in a pattern I could not recognise. As I sat panting after a quickstep with Trevor, I asked him what the difference was between that and running. No difference – just more enjoyable! I also did a few cha-chas and rumbas.

One sour spot in the night was that I felt one of the hosts was a bit too familiar. I will start being less friendly to him if he does not know the boundaries his role entails.