Brenda says the dance floor is a place of peace, shortly before she confiscates Colin’s custard cream.
LEEDS, England – The church hall smells of floor polish, wet anoraks and a tea urn that has seen things. It is half past seven on a Tuesday, it is chucking it down outside, and fourteen of us are standing in two lines waiting for Brenda to say the word that starts everything, which is “Again”.
Half past seven, the grapevine
Our line dance class has been running for longer than most of the people in it have been alive, or at least that is how Brenda tells it. Brenda runs the class with a clipboard, a portable speaker and a stare that can reach the back row. She has a rule, laminated and taped to the piano: “If you turn left, everybody turns left.”
Colin has not yet absorbed this rule. Colin is the man who always goes the wrong way and describes it as “interpretive”. Tonight he did a grapevine so wide he ended up in the kitchen hatch, where he was handed a custard cream by a woman who assumed he was in the queue.
I am, for the record, no better. My footwear is keen and my footwork is best described as optimistic. Tonight I turned left on the vine while the whole line turned right, and Brenda watched me go with the face of a woman reading a parking fine. “Lovely,” she said, “but it is a line dance, not an expedition.”
Eight o’clock, the tea urn parliament
At the break, the urn turns into a debating chamber. Pauline from the post office told us all that her Sunday roast had gone wrong because of the lamb, and then somebody mentioned that a farm site had run a headline, Sheep Farmers Demand Probe of Lamb Imports, and the whole queue went quiet in the way people do when a roast has been dragged into politics. Pauline said, “I only wanted gravy.” Brenda said, “We all only wanted gravy.”
I do not know a thing about lamb imports beyond the headline. I do know that if a grown woman can be brought to silence by the word lamb, there is hope for the nation.
Quarter past eight, the news by the stacking chairs
I had saved my real news for the break, because it is the sort of news Brenda would call “church hall appropriate”. Saving Country Music reports a broadcast date for Alan Jackson’s last show, and a separate Entertainment Now report on the broadcast confirms the details: Alan Jackson: The Last Show airs on NBC on 8 December for two hours, from 8pm Eastern, with a streaming release on Peacock. The concert itself took place at Nissan Stadium in Nashville this summer, and Saving Country Music describes it as his likely final full concert.
I told the class and the room went the particular quiet of a room full of people who have danced to Chattahoochee for years without once asking about the man who sang it. Brenda put her clipboard down. This has never happened before. Pauline whispered, “Is he all right?” and I said, “He is fine, he has just decided to do the last show properly,” and she said, “Well, good for him, that is more than most men manage with a leaving do.”
I am not sure how anyone in Britain is meant to watch an American network broadcast. I asked my flatmate, who said “don’t”, and that was the end of the conversation. If anyone knows a legal way, my inbox is open and my enthusiasm is large.
Nine o’clock, the walk home
After the class, I walked home through the rain with my second-hand acoustic guitar on my back, because Barry Gilfoyle, who teaches me above a launderette, has set me a task of playing in public at least once a week. I did not play in public. I walked past a bus shelter and hummed, which counts as a rehearsal if you are generous and Barry is asleep.
Walking in Leeds in the rain with a guitar is a very particular sensation. People see the guitar and assume you are going to a gig, and you feel obliged to walk like a woman with a gig. A man outside a kebab shop looked at the case and said, “Anything good on?” and I said, “I have no idea,” which is the truest thing I have said in weeks.
Brenda’s closing notes, as read aloud: “There are no wrong steps, only steps you have taken in a different building.”
Late, with cocoa and a conclusion
I got in, hung up my wet coat, made cocoa and wrote this on the landing, where the signal is better and the radiator has been silent since Friday. My editor at The London Prat likes me to describe the exact mood of a diary entry. The mood tonight was tender, with a note of custard cream.
Colin sent a message to the class group chat to say he had “never got the grapevine wrong, only experienced it differently”, and then he used Cockney slang in a way I can only describe as a hostage situation, which sent me back to the site’s explainer on Cockney rhyming slang, for comfort. I also thought about the way a good farewell, like a good bit of commentary, works only if it knows what it is, and the site has a handy piece on what commentary is and what it is not. You can read more of my daily notes at The London Prat whenever you like, I will not be going anywhere, certainly not on a stadium tour.
Tomorrow I will try the G chord again, and if it goes badly I shall blame the rain and the hymn books.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/