The Twelve Days of Christmas: 9

On the ninth day of Christ­mas, my true love gave to me: nine ladies dancing.

I care­fully fol­lowed the map that my true love had provided, but when I arrived at my des­tin­a­tion I was con­vinced that I’d taken a wrong turn­ing. I had been told that I would be spend­ing the day with nine dan­cing ladies, so I fondly ima­gined that the loc­a­tion would be some­where a little more lively, a little more glam­or­ous, than a drab church hall in a part of the city com­pletely unfa­mil­iar to me. Accord­ing to the notice­board attached to the rail­ings, the next social event on the church hall’s cal­en­dar was a talk about flower arran­ging. It seemed unlikely that I was about to be treated to a dis­play of pole-dancing.

From inside the hall, I could hear the sound of a slightly out of tune piano play­ing Begin the Beguine, with just enough dis­son­ance between the notes to set my teeth on edge. Push­ing open the door to invest­ig­ate, I was con­fron­ted by what appeared to be a tea dance for — well, to put it politely — ladies of a cer­tain age. I decided that this was def­in­itely the wrong place, and hast­ily retraced my steps back towards the exit.

“Young man, where are you going? We’ve been expect­ing you!”

Startled, I spun round.

“Oh, I see you can move rather well already. That’s a good start, isn’t it, ladies?”

Look­ing around me, I real­ised that the last time I’d shared a room with so many thick spec­tacles, pearl neck­laces and blue rinses was at my grandmother’s funeral. The most impos­ing of this nine-strong group stepped for­ward to address me.

“As I say, we’ve been expect­ing you. Myself and the other ladies of St Hilda’s Church Hall have been asked to instruct you in the art of dan­cing. Proper dancing.”

I laughed out loud, but see­ing nine pairs of eyes star­ing at me dis­ap­prov­ingly over the rims of nine pairs of spec­tacles soon con­vinced me that this was no joke.

“We shall start with a simple waltz,” called out the pian­ist, as one of the ladies took my hand and led me to the centre of the hall.

And so for the next few hours, I was gently but firmly coached in the Waltz, the Tango and the Slow Fox­trot. I quickly went from feel­ing like a vis­itor in some bygone age to being immensely com­fort­able in my new com­pany. Thirtyso­mething going on six­tyso­mething. By the time after­noon tea was served — fin­ger sand­wiches, pastries and scones with jam and cream — I was chat­ting away to the ladies about their past, com­mis­er­at­ing about the piti­ful state pen­sion and find­ing out about the forth­com­ing diary of social engage­ments at the church hall.

I was deep in con­ver­sa­tion with Beryl about the rude­ness of today’s bus drivers when the insist­ent beep­ing of my mobile phone jol­ted me back into real­ity. It was a text mes­sage from my true love.

“In thirty years, when we’re their age, we’ll go dan­cing, eat scones and talk about the good old days. I wanted you to have some practice.”

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