Dancin’ – 26 September 2024

Another cold day. We seem to have skipped autumn and gone straight to winter!

A quick lunch and then we were driving over to Glenburn for today’s Tea Dance. Such a difference between Glenburn and Brookside. Last week Brookside had no heating of any sort. Today, the heating was on in Glenburn and had been for some time to make sure we were comfortable.

The usual programme of music and dances. I do find it’s a bit repetitive, but I also know that it’s that same repetition that embeds the moves in my brain. The waltz we started with was the Four Seasons and we do know it quite well, so after a few missteps I remembered most of it. Then the Cha-Cha and the Jive. That seems to be the fallback trilogy with occasional Quickstep, although that was missing today and a Foxtrot which we intended to try Kirsty’s steps, but either she or we had missed something, because it simply didn’t flow as it should have done.

After the tea break, Stewart tried to teach the Butterfly Jive to us all. I can remember the first part of it, but after that it just gets too complicate too quickly for my poor feet to catch up. After two rounds of the Butterfly, Stewart walked back to his desk, saying “That was Fun!”. I heard nobody agreeing with him, in fact there seemed to silence across the hall. I used to think the most hateful dance was he Cha-Cha. All that nonsense about starting on the second beat was simply nonsense to me, but now I’ve come to terms with the dance. Maybe in a couple of years I’ll also come to terms with the Butterfly Jive DV. Perhaps not. I don’t know if I was extra crabbit today, but everything seemed to put my teeth on edge. Maybe it was the weather, which had started out wet, but by the time we were leaving, the sun was coming out.

Back home, that sun that was coming out, was hiding again, but I managed a walk down to Broadwood Loch and got some late afternoon photos of swans. I also spotted and photographed some Bitter Nightshade. I often wondered what those bright little berries on the boardwalk and why the birds didn’t eat them. It appears that some birds can eat the berries without injury, but most avoid them. The berries are also poisonous to humans. A photo of one of the swans preening got PoD.

No real plans for tomorrow. Scamp is hoping to go to FitSteps in the morning.