Chez Spud

There are many things that I adore about my oldest child … but his dogged desire to have dancing lessons, even though he’s the only boy in the class, is one of my favourite things about him. He just doesn’t care that he’s the only boy, I’m not sure it’s really occurred to him that perhaps it is a little strange to be one boy among a sea of pink. When asked to join the dance school, I told him he’d be the only boy. He said he didn’t care and that was that. If my mother were alive she would be so tickled, since she was a ballet/tap/modern dance teacher in her younger years.

So, every Saturday, he puts on his smart white T shirt, his smart blue shorts and his special white ballet socks and off he trots to dancing school to spend an hour learning tap and ballet. I spent ages putting his name in his ballet and tap shoes. Why? He’s the only one with black shoes, there’s no chance of a shoe muddle! All the others are white or pink, of course.

Tap tappity tap. Here he is, today, giving us a little show in the kitchen. Diggy now says he wants to do dancing too. ‘The Brothers Spud’ … I can see it in lights …

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Awww, look! There’s the wife looking super fine, super cool, superdooper on her birthday yesterday. She’s actually 105 now but, by the miracles of modern science and good skincare, she doesn’t look a day over 35 does she? There are vicious rumours of a little post processing ‘help’ but that’s between me, Lightroom and the gun the wife has nailed against my forehead…

Lately I have age on my mind. The big FOUR-OH is looming this year and I’ve decided to embrace the fecker with my list 39 things to do before I’m 40. The theory is that I will arrive on my FOUR-OH birthday feeling smug and fulfilled rather than old and baggy. Also, over Christmas, I was truly delighted to learn that my Wii Fit age is 51. My mother-in-law (60 something) tried it too, just for a lark, and her Wii Fit age is 46. Wrongity wrong wrong wrong. Basically, I’m ancient and knackered already, and nothing but botox and a tediously strict macrobiotic diet can resolve it. Or so I thought…

Well, hoorah, just in the nick of time I have discovered the secret of youthfulness and you don’t find it in a pot of face cream or a syringe full of toxins. Instead you’ll find your mispent youth lurking on the dancefloor, clad in a pair of sparkley high heeled sandals and a swishy skirt. Even the men. Yes, ballroom dancing is the end to all our aging woes and I have photographic proof.

Whilst shambling through the Royal Festival Hall yesterday on our zimmer frames, me and the wife happened upon some kind of Strictly Come Dancing tea dance ‘thing’ going on. It was hugely popular, mostly frequented by men of a ‘certain age’ and their rather young Asian wives but let’s skip that part. My point is this…the ladies of a certain age (well in to their 60s) were so elegant, agile, light on their feet, balletic, athetic, jolly, gorgeous and looked decades younger than they were. Look at this beauty…I wouldn’t air my mummy arms in public even now, and I’m only 39…respect to the Toned Armed One…and check out the nipped in waist and lovely pair of pins…

Me and wife looked on helplessly having rebuffed offers to dance with her dapper partner on the basis that, er, we can’t actually dance. “But it’s the cha cha cha!”, he retorted looking, rightly, appalled, “EVERYONE can do the cha cha cha!”. Seriously, we can’t. So he danced with the Audrey Hepburn look alike and we photographed them strutting their stuff with such panache.

‘Audrey’ was much in demand as a dance partner, but when she wasn’t she sat on the side with her two lovely friends and waited like a proper lady.

I congratulated them on their wonderful dancing and told them that they’d made me wish I could dance. They very earnestly told me that I MUST learn, and that dancing keeps you youthful. And there they sat…the proof of the pudding….looking years and years, 10 years probably, younger than they actually were.

So I’m hoping my list of 39 things to day before 40 is editable? If so, I’m taking off ‘making biscuits for the first time’ off the list because (a) it’s toally lame anyway and (b) I could just nip down the shops and buy a packet couldn’t I? But the pursuit of guaranteed youthfulness? You can’t buy that in a packet down the shops can you?

So, who’s up for the cha cha cha with me? My dancecard has spaces but, be warned, I will likely clumsily stamp on your foot with my sparkly shoes. Sorry about that.

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I’m not here, I’ve twirled off for a little bit for my grandfather’s funeral. I will write about him when I’m back…I haven’t felt like it since he died. I hate this limbo period between death and the funeral, it’s a strange, suspended reality version of life.

I realise the photo has nothing to do with this post. I just LOVE it and it makes me feel happy looking at it, so I thought I’d share it. Oh to be four and whirling around in your party dress, with nothing more worrying than how big a piece of birthday cake you can snaffle without anyone noticing.

Blog Tribe…I salute you! Back soon x

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New mini project…’Ten Treasures’…ten things I would grab should my house be on fire,  assuming all the Spuds were accounted for, my handbag, my photos and my MacBook. Some of the treasures are materialistic, some are sentimental, some are both. Some are pretty things that serve no purpose anymore, I just keep them because I like them. Others are things that remind me of people and days gone by, and I cherish them as much as I cherish my memories.

First up, my pretty, sparkly Chanel party shoes. I bought these a few years ago in New York, in about 5 minutes flat. I had a black tie work function to attend one evening, and realised mid-afternoon that the skyscrapers I’d packed to wear were completely impractical for an evening when I actually had to zip about working rather than just floating, drinking and making small talk. Note, these are the shoes which I was wearing for that ill-advised foray in to air guitar.

So I zooooomed to Saks, thew my credit card at a delighted looking sales assistant,  hurried out with these beauties and made haste to the Waldorf. Ah, happy days. These days I throw rice cakes at small children and zoom to softplay.

I totally heart them. One of my anxieties during pregnancy (as well as the usual ones about the babies!) was whether my folded over legs feet would go back to their usual size post delivery, otherwise my Chanel shoes would be for the chop. Well, other bits of me didn’t fare too well but at least my feet shrank back to their usual proportions. Alas opportunities to wear them are now few and far between, but I like stroking them every now and again.

For the pedants among you it should be CHANEL not Chanel. BUT THE CAPITALISATION BOTHERS ME. And it’s my project, and they are my shoes. Poor Coco is probably turning in her CHANEL NO 5 scented grave.

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Go on...I dare you...

Care to dance? Fancy a spin round the dancefloor with me? Spin me, twirl me, jitterbug and whirl me…let’s bop, let’s jive, let’s shimmy and shake…let’s strut our stuff until our big fat ankles ache…

Oooh I’m getting all poetic. Rhyming ‘n’ everfink. So do you? Care to take a spin with me and  dance like there’s nobody watching? Well, you’d better pray nobody is watching if you’re dancing with me because, frankly, it’s embarrassing.

You know those awkward looking souls always hugging the edge of the dance floor, swaying and rocking and jigging from foot to foot whilst throwing murderous glances in the direction of the cool kids who really know how to throw some shapes? Yup, that’s me, I’m one of those.

I’m actually very peeved that the cool dancing gene passed me by as, in my head, I can really trip the light fantastic, man, I’m on fire on the dance floor.  My mother was a ballet/tap/modern dance teacher so surely I should be able to manage a bit of disco dancing? But, no, my entire repertoire consists of (a) the shuffle (b) the sway and (c) what can only be described as ‘the lurch, with pointing’.

Alcohol doesn’t improve matters, quite the opposite. All it does is unleash an inner, deep belief that I am a brilliant disco dancer. Enter a new Spud dance in to the equation which is ‘the lurch, with pointing, AND SINGING ALONG LOUDLY’ even though I never know the words. Oh no…I’m blushing now as I remember Discos of Yore and my shambolic performances.

Alas said discos were not in some village hall in my youth. Oh no, I’m talking about work functions and many, many of them. I’m surprised I’m still in employment actually. There may even have been an episode of AIR GUITAR, complete with something tied around my head, on a balcony in the ballroom of the Waldorf hotel, with an audience of all 700 partners of the law firm I worked for at the time. Shudder.

MrSpud is pretty ‘special’ on the dancing front too. He compliments my ‘lurching with pointing’ attempts with a kind of ‘hobbit’ dancing. He likes to dance alone, and can generally be found wheeling around the corners of the dance floor, slightly hunched over like someone’s just punched him in the stomach complete with low moaning (I think that’s him singing though). Kind of like a hunch-backed, dwarf sized Morrissey.

Imagine our shared joy when it dawned on us that we were going to have to perform for our wedding guests during the torturous ‘first dance’. What to do? The hobbit with wheeling? The lurch with pointing? Bit of air guitar? Ah, a story for another day.

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