I went to a wedding recently. It was a lovely day, the bride
looked stunning, the ceremony was touching and the company was outstanding.
Really wonderful. It was in Edinburgh and brilliantly, in the middle of the
reception, the Celidh music started up and everyone got up to dance. I stumbled
my way through the ‘Gay Gordons’, I was slightly hindered by the fact that I
was wearing a strapless dress and was aware that it was working it’s way down
to reveal my bra and working it’s way up to reveal my spanx. As pretty much all
the dance is spent with your arms above your head it is hard to get a moment to
rearrange your dress. I sat out the ‘Dashing White Sergent’ and ‘Strip the Willow ’ and I think that
was wise. My co-ordination is not the strongest and I could see my partner
starting to think I had issues when I couldn’t remember the three moves to the
‘Gay Gordons’.
I used to go to Celidhs at University. Back then I always
wore trainers and pretty much relied upon just getting flung about and being
drunk. The next day there would always be some kind of dance related injury. I
would like to stress that the wedding was far more civilised and no one was
thrown off the dance floor and in to a crowd of people. But everyone (save the
English) knew the moves and everyone joined in. It was lovely.
…and not something you get an English weddings. I think we’d
all be pretty disconcerted if at somepoint in the proceedings a maypole was
broken out and everyone was given a hanky and we all broke in to some English
country dancing. This makes me sad.
If you fancy a dull challenge, ask someone to name an
English Country Dance move other than the ‘dosey doh’. I don’t even know if
that’s how you spell it. Perhaps it’s that traditional English dancing involves
too many props. Hankies and sticks and special bell straps that you tie above
the knees. You also seem to have to wear an all white ensemble and as we all
know, only the bride should wear white at a wedding. It would also mean picking
a wedding venue based on where you could comfortably situate a ten foot pole
with a load of ribbons hanging off it.
I did country dancing at Primary school and I just remember
being terrified that the pole was going to topple over and kill us all. Then we
skipped around tying ribbons in to knots, then dropped the ribbons and walked
off. Never to communally dance again until the school discos kicked in and we
could shuffle around to Rick Astley whilst drinking a panda pop.
We’re missing out. Let’s start a dance troop. Let’s storm Britain ’s Got Talent.
Let’s make leaping around to fluglehorns whilst trashed on cider the new Ibiza . We can do it.
Alternatively – go to more weddings in Scotland.
