Weeknotes 2022.31: Ending 15 long years of refusing to dance

I have not danced for 15 years, until Friday, when I was at a close family member’s wedding. I have resisted it for a long time, for a reason I can pinpoint exactly: year 7 dance classes in 2005, when we were made to do a warm up dance to the Crazy Frog remix of Axel F, which, at the time, was being sold as a ringtone which was literally fucking everywhere and even outsold COLDPLAY. Every TV channel, every programme, every ad break. If you were so much as conscious in the mid-2000s and watch the movie Beverly Hills Cop, Harold Faltermeyer’s synth riff, as banging as it is, will set off Kill Bill sirens in your head. You understand why I didn’t take to dance classes and swore off it in public for a decade and a half.

I realise now, that having avoided dancing at parties for the best part of 2 decades, all the fads have passed me by. I had genuinely never heard the Macarena until Friday and couldn’t sing it if you asked me to. But now I see that Todd in the Shadows only recently released a 25 minute exposé of the rise and fall of the Macarena? A massive dance craze that was a truly organic viral success before ‘virality’ was even what we called it? Man, I truly am out of touch.

The wedding was an opportunity to dress up. I also don’t think I’ve eaten while wearing a tie since school. Fun, but I definitely couldn’t do a job that involved wearing a shirt and tie every day. (And as far as I’m concerned, school uniforms should be abolished.)

Open water swimming at Highgate Men’s Pond is proving to be dangerous(ly addictive), although I suspect it won’t be the same when the water temperature drops below 20ºC. It’ll probably be busy this week with another heatwave coming. (Previously.)

Brockenhurst is nice, although it is probably the only time I’ve seen car drivers honking at a crowd of donkeys which were causing a traffic jam. (Let’s just say you can tell who’s local and who’s visiting and not used to this.) The donkeys were very sweet.