Entertainment For Lively Minds
Are you dancing? I'm asking!
I've been lucky to attend three weddings over the past 12 months - lucky because once I hit 40 I doubted I'd ever go a wedding again.
They've all been a real treat. I've enjoyed the ceremonies far more than I did in my surly twenties and the nosh seems to have got even better over the last 20 years.
But what I particularly enjoyed was the dancing. It brought back a lot of memories of shaking a tailfeather in clubs and uni - the wait for the right tune to hit the floor so you don't peak too early (Lovecats is ok, but Teenage Kicks might be on soon), the adaptation of the indie shuffle to any tune (move feet and arms a bit, look at floor), the attempt at Hairspray-esque dances to anything from the fifties or sixties, and dancing for the first time to promising newcomers such as the fancy dress chanteuse Lady Gaga.
It made me think - where can the over-40s have a bit of a bop these days?
There are house parties, of course, but there's a danger of trampling over small children or knocking over treasured ornaments with an over-enthusiastic, Morrissey-esque flourish of the arms.
I've been thinking of going to a Belle and Sebastian night, but fear, even here, an old duffer like me will have alice bands and cardigan buttons flung at me by the fey hordes.
So, do any maturer readers still go dancing in clubs? And I mean dancing to pop and rock, not regimented salsa classes or anything like that.
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I love dancing.
I hate clubs, though. I never did like them, except as an opportunity to fail to get off with girls, and the dancing used to make me feel terribly self-conscious and rubbish back in those days of taking myself much too seriously. The only way, back then, was to get blind drunk, which I'm sure wasn't at all connected with my usual failure to pull.
I'd go these days, but I still wouldn't enjoy a club. I'd feel so very old and fat that all possible enjoyment would sapped from the experience before I even got in the door, and anyway, I've never particularly enjoyed dancing to "club music".
What I want is a place like the one Rob sets up in High Fidelity. Motown, disco, modern pop, a bit of uptempo indie, overwhelmingly populated by the over-30s, and absolutely no music snobs allowed. If it had a place away from the sound system where you stood a reasonable chance of a conversation or an outside area to cool off and natter, so much the better.
If that existed near me, I'd be in like Flynn.
I'd like that club too
But I'd like it even more if was populated entirely by music snobs!
If I'm on a stag do or something
then I'm all over it. Otherwise I don't even think about it.
I went to a club in Windsor on a recent stag do when I ended up doing the Beyonce booty shake and a bit of impromptu pole dancing.
I went to an indie disco in Birmingham on one of our lads' weekends - we all felt like perverts, at least twice the age of all the girls in there so we left with our tails between our legs.
I have to be extremely refreshed to dance these days and it's more to raise a laugh than enjoyment of the pursuit itself.
Nightclubs for old people
Surely it's only a matter of time. I love a good dance, but I wouldn't dream of going near a nightclub these days, they're for the young.
But if they were to open a club that played the pop hits from yesteryear and everyone was about the same age and once you'd had a few drinks you'd think nothing of hitting the dancefloor and never coming off just like if you were at a wedding and the music ace, then I'd go. Not often, but I'd go.
I love dancing!
I'm just not very good at it. Not that it stops me.
I want to go and flail around happily to 80s music (or something like the scenario that Bob describes above. That would be ace). Any London-based Massive know of anywhere good to go (or indeed want to join me?)
Go to Birmingham
http://hareandhoundskingsheath.co.uk/2011/08/14/high-fidelity-we-play-th...
The Adelphi in Hull
anyone between 12 and 75 is there.
"A bit of a bop"? Oh dear. A bit Saga isn't it?
Props for "fey hordes" though. Two more etc.