I went to a Barn Dance last week! Yes, I was docey doe’ing and promenading with the best of them.
The enemy, the good lady wife, decided to add flavour to the experience buy dressing as a cowgirl and instructed me to find some sort of cow poke kit for myself. It took some rummaging but I stepped into the taxi thinking I looked like Hoss Cartwright from Bonanza, in fact it was more Wild Bill Pillock than anything else. But in a matter of minutes we entered the dance hall where forty or so normally dressed startled looking decent members of society sat and watched the entry of The Good, The Bad and The Overweight.
I should mention that a large group of us went to this splendid function including two friends, Tiny Tim and Ned Flanders from the Coop and what a rug they cut!
It all started quietly but built to a full contact sport within the space of one dance, resulting in a life time ban from barns for Ned Flanders and a series of images that may take months for me to erase.
Ned took to the dancing with great gusto, a thing processed would be an apt description, as at one point, when I returned from the bogs, I found him pogo’ing on the spot having lost his partner and apparently had turned from Johnny Cash to Johnny Rotten in the space of one reel! However, the main damage happened when we were asked to change partners, again Ned has received a lifetime ban from dancing with anyone other the small circle of friends who have personal liability insurance.
Grabbing a retired Post Mistress from Gillingham, he spun her into a table of cheesy wotsits, the orange cloud of dust covering most of the Recovering Alcoholic’s Quartet who were providing the music.
The dance floor now looked like the opening scenes of Saving Private Ryan with several couples deciding to ‘sit this one out’ until Ned went to the bar.
I then entered the fray with the enemy and picked up the beat rather well I thought but I am afraid I docey’ed when I should have doe’d and had a mid air collision with Tiny Tim. He’s six foot two and has the same breaking distance of a Route Master bus. He potted me like a snooker ball into the small but beautifully marked couple behind me and they collapsed like Northern Rock shares.
I soon discovered that short and normally built people like barn dancing, so trying to squeeze myself and the enemy under a human arch was reminiscent of watching Shamu giving birth at SeaWorld.
Food arrived, which gave everybody the chance to use the First Aid kit and the authorities to look for survivors and then back into the whirl.
The evening ended for me when I trod on someone’s muffin, did the splits and lost my inhaler under a bloke from Plympton.
In conclusion barn dancing is a great way to meet a whole new circle of people who hopefully you will never meet again. It is slightly more embarrassing than being arrested for shoplifting in Primark…..but only slightly.
Yee haa
Fitz
