Shall we dance?

I love music and often dance with the kind of enthusiasm reserved for discovering you’ve won the lottery or that Brad Pitt wants your phone number. At uni, old-housemate-who-now-lives-in-Cornwall used to describe my movement to music as ‘Breakdancing’. Where there was music and me dancing, something always used to get broken.

But as I’ve got older and perhaps a teeny bit more deaf(er) I’ve become more sedate and the only things likely to get broken are at hip level as housemate has taught me the art of Shakira-style hip shaking.

I’ve also become less able to dance to things I don’t know, perhaps because the beat is less clear, or because dancing always feels better if you can at least belt out the chorus, even if the words are wrong, with the best of them.

Take last weekend when I went to a house party. It was a very civilised affair, there was a buffet, card tricks in the front room and in the back room, which was apparently the man of the house’s mid-life crisis room, there was dancing.

Ooh great, I thought to myself. Maybe they’ll play some Shakira and I can get people hip-breaking (I was the youngest person there!). Cue, The Beach Boys, who I guess were floor fillers from ooh God only knows…

This did not please me as I don’t know a single Beach Boys song and, because when dancing, I rely on familiar beats. As a result, this led me to demonstrate the dancing aptitude of a newborn foal born to a drug-dependant mare.

I wonder, when I am old enough to have a mid-life crisis room, or more to the point, rich enough to afford a spare room to have a mid-life crisis in, if I will throw parties with buffets, card tricks and dancing? I hope so – old-housemate-who-now-lives-in-Cornwall would most definitely be invited as she was also a fan of that classic, hit-producing, sensational band…. Um…
Steps.

And, at least we would have plenty of room to breakdance, as I doubt anyone else would turn up!