Saturday, October 22, 2011

Memories - dancing

I am on a roll, people. Cutting, ironing, pinning, sewing. It may not last because one day like this and I need a week to recover, so I am trying to get stuff done. Ticking the boxes. I can't tell you what I am making because most of the people who will be receiving what I am making as Christmas gifts, read this.

Oh well.

It involves Christmas material. My quest to use only what is in the cupboard is going well. And I have plans for the scraps too. Unfortunately, the cupboards are just as full as when I began, it seems. I really need to empty the cupboards and sort things into colours. Oh good grief - this house has not got enough space for that, and I may have a nervous breakdown once the piles were all over the floor and give up. So I will continue working on little piles.

I am watching Strictly Come Dancing as I am writing - and I am remembering my first year at university. I stayed in a university residence up on the campus and we had ballroom dancing classes arranged for us. In those days the men and women had separate halls of residence, but hallelujah, we were allowed to mingle at ballroom classes, so everyone was there. Of course we were.

The common room - a huge rectangular hall, had beautiful parquet flooring, ideal for dancing. I cannot begin to tell you how much fun we had. We actually learned to dance too, but the cha cha was our corporate nemesis. One two cha cha cha, I can see it now. And we did fine as we moved down the hall, but when we got to the corner, we had a pile up. Total. People falling onto the floor, in heaps of laughter. We did not have the slightest idea of how to turn the corner. The teacher had forgotten to tell us how to rotate. And you know, every single one of us still remembers the night of the chacha, and when I see it on these TV dance competitions, I sit here and grin.

Learning how to dance is such a wonderful thing. Before my son's Matric Dance, he had ballroom lessons, and now the school provides them for all the boys. How special it is for a woman to dance with someone who knows what to do. Along with half the female population of the world, I was one who dreamed of dancing just once with someone like Patrick Swayze, after watching Dirty Dancing. I loved that movie. The dancing was so amazing.

Sigh.

One day maybe. I am still waiting.


3 comments:

Helen in Switzerland said...

I was right there with you watching Strictly, Linds - it was a real laugh this evening, wasnt it - and I love the fact that suddenly some people are coming out of their shells and doing so well. I wouldn't mind at all though if a certain Italian lady walked the plank tomorrow - poor, poor Anton. he really does deserve to get someone half decent for a change!
We had dances at school where we had to ballroom dance and my mum taught my younger brother and I - and we were pretty much the only ones who could dance properly. He was the school heart throb in those days and I was the boring older sister.....

Needled Mom said...

I do think that the scraps have babies at night when we are not watching over them!!!!!

I love to see beautiful dancing too. When we were on the ship they had a lot of male dancers who would dance with the single women - many elderly widows who could dance their socks off. Beautiful!!!

boysmum2 said...

I love ballroom dancing, I love watching it. I would love to learn it and dance it just once or twice with someone who knows what they are doing to truely experience it. I can just picture you all tumbliong to the floor as you cha cha cha'd instead of 1, 2 3ing!