La Tarantella

All right, all right – calm down. I know, I know, I haven't posted a blog for ages but I do have a living to earn you know, and I was out enjoying myself over the Bank Holiday. For yes it is true - I rushed home on Friday evening full of anticipation for a great weekend, and I wasn't disappointed. On Friday we went to Shaw's to watch 'The Shakes' perform which was most excellent fun. It always strikes me as odd that a room full of people can begin as a decorous crowd of civilized diners, and yet can end as a riotous assembly of drunken revellers. When a band such as 'The Shakes' is performing, most people begin by quietly applauding each number, nodding approval to each other in an appreciative way. But it never ends that way. The French dramatist Beaumarchais once wrote about how calumny can spread through a society like a pandemic – beginning with a ripple of rumour and suspicion, and ending with the rage of a forest fire, devouring all before it.

So it is in Shaw's. The vaguest ripple of a rhythm begins to buzz around the room, and soon afterwards a single couple might slough off their frail inhibitions and start dancing. Before long, the ripple becomes a wave of movement that gushes across the entire room, until there are people cramming the small area designated as a dance floor. Then soon there are people dancing in the spaces between the very tables at which some diners are finishing their meals; they're dancing on the windowsills; by the bar; in doorways; and even on those tables where the hapless diners have already finished eating. The room becomes an uprising of passion and tempo. It reminds me of those quite ordinary bars in Spain where at one moment people are chatting and drinking as normal and then the next, are overtaken by an overwhelming longing to shake their heads and their hips, as if gripped by the fever of la tarantella. It was quite an evening.

The remainder of the Bank Holiday was more of the same, really. I spent Sunday at the sailing club where it was blowing old boots (and yet with glorious sunshine) so that we were able to complete most races in half the time it often takes to get around the course. A great way to blow away the cobwebs of excess (not that I had any, of course).

And it's not as if it ended there either – last night, after a gruelling day back at the orifice, I went to another festival of performance produced by 'Hatch'. This time it was held in the slightly more salubrious surroundings of 'The Ropewalk', but again presented us with an eclectic mix of the weird and the wonderful (including, shock horror, male nudity). I won't say too much about it because I've been commissioned to write a review of the evening for Nottingham's latest arts magazine 'Nottingham Visual Arts'. You can look out for my review of this fascinating and provocative evening of light entertainment when it's published, sometime after this weekend. I'll post a link here.

This evening I've been to the launch party for the very same magazine which was a pleasant event indeed – lots of old faces (especially in my case, ha!) and some lively chat about what constitutes visual art today. There was also (of course) the usual free booze and food. I keep trying to increase the number of such events that I can get invited to, so that I never have to buy any food or drink again. The trouble is, there's only so much champagne and canapés that a person can take.

Anyway, tomorrow evening I shall be back on the river in my rubber sailing boots and clinging lycra. If today's wind is anything to go by, we'll be back across the finishing line before we've even started – which should give me enough time to nip out later for a quick snifter of the hard stuff before heading off to bed. I look forward to it.

So, dear reader, I will try not to neglect you in the future – but for now I must put on my face mask and get my curlers in. The cocoa is boiling and the nightlight is on. Tomorrow's early start beckons.

Sweet dreams.