The Wheelchair in the Hall

When I saw the taxicab pull away at 3 AM I felt relief that it had found us and then, unexpectedly, I fell into a pit of loneliness. My brother was on his way back to Montreal. 

Si tu vois mon pays,
Mon pays malheureux,
Va, dis à mes amis
Que je me souviens d'eux.

Nulli had stayed a week, but it felt like a weekend at most. The hours flashed by, even though we were both working half the time. Two or three times, Nulli was the one who broke off, went downstairs to the shed, got out the ramp and went to meet Benedict Ambrose and his electric wheelchair at the street. He put the ramp and the wheelchair away and watched his brother-in-law's uncertain steps up the staircase. He stood by as B.A. shakingly twisted himself around and dropped into his house wheelchair. I hope Nulli wasn't too distressed. I am constantly distressed. 

B.A. doesn't feel great about it either. 

The flat was affordable to buy and cheap to run and has lovely views and neighbours. But it is crammed with books and furniture, the relics of pre-cancer days, and I trip over the wheelchair in the hall. When it comes to real estate, the FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) movement fights over "Rent or Buy?" It's a gamble either way. But when we bought a first floor flat, we hadn't had the slightest indication Benedict Ambrose would develop spinal tumours. It's like having bet on a horse who, mid-race, was beamed aboard an alien spacecraft. 

Do we sell? 

It's a question I try not to dwell on, as moving house is famously one of the most stressful activities there is, and we have enough stress to be getting on with. If the tumours are shrinking, why is B.A. so tired? Will he recover from coming off steroids? Will he ever walk again? What will my own blood test reveal? And then there's work. How has Pope Francis betrayed the faith this morning? In what manner has Donald Trump now thrown social conservatives under the bus? Should we actually publish this particular essay? And then there's B.A.'s work. Will he make it through probation when he feels so sick? 

Do we sell? 

Asked if I had any questions for B.A.'s oncologist, I asked her if we should sell. She took this in her stride, and it occurs to me that many of her patients, lacking family ties, probably turn to her as we would turn to B.A.'s siblings or cousins, if he had had any. 

She said in short that we should not hurry to sell but that we should not hesitate to buy something that we liked, should it be on the/have a ground floor. 

The subtext is that Benedict Ambrose may never balance/stand/walk any better than he does now, or he may balance/stand/walk better than he does now, but medical science cannot say. Recovery from nerve damage is still one of the great unknowns, etc. 

I think about the horrid gimcrack new builds in our area, which we might afford (until they fell apart), and the lovely well-constructed old bungalows, which we couldn't. A ground floor flat would put us at the mercy of the noise of People Upstairs, which B.A. really hates and I have never experienced. I think about the solid Toronto houses I have lived in and mentally follow B.A.'s electric wheelchair. Nope--steps. Nope--steps. 

Do we sell? 

Update: It occurs to me that we could just rent it out and take a lease on something suitable. There's actually no good reason to go through the agony of selling-and-mortgage-finding-and-buying. Except that rentals are unlikely to have grab bars in the loo. Maybe this could be negotiated with the landlord.

Woke bullying

When I saw this question on Slate (or, rather, Slate's paid-for Facebook post), I immediately assumed that the writer would be sneered at. I was pleasantly surprised to discover the advice columnist actually sided with her gentle reader--until I saw that this response was from 1998. The 2024 update was not so chummy.

Dear Prudence,

Granted, I am not young, but I am not a fuddy-duddy either. Are you reacting to all the blue nail polish, body piercings, spiky hair, and nose rings? Sometimes the young salespeople are so strange looking it is distracting. Am I nuts and just out of it?

—Thanks,

Fussy or Normal

Original Response:

Dear Fuss,

Prudie—not young but not a fuddy-duddy, either—couldn’t agree with you more. Often feeling like a lobotomized dowager, Prudie blanches when she sees some of the young people, frequently wondering how it is possible that they think they look appealing. There is hope, though. When they grow a little older and get serious about becoming employed, the green hair and atavistic piercings disappear. Alas, we seem to be stuck with the odd-colored nail polish–purple, blue, and green being Prudie’s unfavorites.

—Prudie, wistfully
From: Dear Prudence (Sept. 5, 1998).

Advice From the Future:

Dear Fuss,

Today, you and Prudie would indeed be called fuddy-duddies by the majority of generations. While I hope that in the intervening decades, you’ve come to embrace colorful hair, piercings, and tattoos a bit more than at the time of your letter, I understand if you’re still resistant to them. There are still many folks who struggle with these modes of expression being so common and, in some cases, so visually “loud.”

It’s not for me to police your likes and preferences when out and about in society. But what I find inspiring about the way we more freely adorn ourselves today relates precisely to Prudie’s reply, in which she wonders how it is that today’s young people think they look appealing. The adults I know who dye, ink, and pierce themselves do not do it to “look appealing” (to others, it is implied); they do it because it pleases themselves. We are amidst a cultural awakening, still gaining force, in which we are getting smarter about valuing ourselves regardless of the opinions of others. We are pushing back at dress codes that police women’s bodies rather than men’s behavior. We are removing appearance codes from the office and judging employees instead on the quality of their work. We are not perfect by any means, but we are a lot more inclusive of the many ways to be in the world than we were 30 years ago. Were you writing to me today, Fuss, I would encourage you to focus on that fact. Green hair is a small price to pay for a society that is moving toward making space for everyone. —Allison

"It's not for me to police your likes and preferences---but." 

The part about being "amidst a cultural awakening" sent a chill down my spine, as does "a society that is moving forward, making space for everyone," for these are euphemisms and misdirections. In my experience, "making space for everyone" means excluding tradition-minded Christians. 

If a society is so atomized that people present themselves with no thought for how their appearance affects others, there is no society, not really. There are bodies moving through space, often plugged into electronic music devices, ignoring other bodies, except the most sexually appealing or physically frightening. There is no "we," except the "we" of the pink-haired mutilated people, snarling at the past behind the safety of their computer screens.

"You look very smart," said an elderly man in a wheelchair at Tesco. 

This was directed at me as I was buying goodness knows what just before going to a funeral. I had put an unusual amount of thought in my clothing, so as to convey respect for the deceased and her loved ones. Not too much black, as I was not family. Not too long a skirt, as I didn't want to stand out. I was wearing a black knee-length dress with navy tights, coat, gloves and hat, and richly coloured scarf to tone down my sartorial gloom. At Tesco I wore black flats; at the funeral I wore navy court heels. 

However, as the deceased was in the arts, it was not a huge surprise to me when a younger woman with Crayola hair and a multicolour-striped skirt got off the bus at the crematorium. Oddly, I was grateful to the clownish striped skirt (background colour black), for it signalled that I was in the right place at the right time. At the same time, of course, traditional funeral clothing would probably have sufficed for that. 

And I cannot help but remember the insult, uttered in a 1987 film, "In time you'll drop dead, and I'll come to your funeral in a red dress." One day this threat will make absolutely no sense to viewers in the Anglosphere because they will no longer share a common understanding of what is appropriate for important rituals. Among the majority, there will be no "we," no crowd of darkly clad mourners, and no folk dress. 

 

Mrs McLean's Waltzing Party

Hello, dear readers! This is just a quick note to direct you to my beautiful new website-under-construction. It is called Mrs McLean's Waltzing Party, and its web address is https://tradcathsocialdancing.co.uk/  If you look at the top right corner, you will see the friendly word "Blog." 

As yet we haven't put in a comments box, but that will come along after the tremendous fuss occasioned by my article over at "Tradition & Sanity" has died down. 

Only the Concrete is Good

I live in a specific place (Scotland) in a specific time (early 21st century) with a specific man (Benedict Ambrose). I am also a specific person--and an immigrant, albeit one with strong ancestral ties to Edinburgh and other places in Scotland. 

I love to visit the specific buildings in which my ancestors and their families lived. On All Soul's Day I visit the cemetery (wet, untidy, depressing) where my Edinburgh great-great-grandfather lies. His widow was buried in Canada, whence she and their children emigrated. I can't pass their old home without thinking of them all and of my grandma, too. When she was small, her mother took her to Edinburgh for a year or two while sorting out some family business. And when she grew up, my grandmother married into another family from the east coast of Scotland. Various quirks of East Coast culture, some quite passé, were trained into my mother and then into me. And then I married into the remnants of a family from the east coast of Scotland, so here I am, watching the northern morning sunlight light up the trees along the river. 

I love living in Scotland, and I love the Scots although some aspects of contemporary Scottish life were a shock. Having grown up worried that Quebec nationalists would break up Canada, I was stunned to find myself among Scottish nationalists longing to split the United Kingdom. The crude language and nudity permitted on British TV were another surprise, as were the minuscule outfits and skyscraper heels on young ladies on Princes Street, even on cold, rainy winter nights. Homeless Scottish youngsters begging on the street blew my mind. Despite their clothes and their coarse language (which I couldn't understand), they had faces like children from Toronto's top private schools. (Of course this says more about 1980s Toronto than 2000s Edinburgh.) 

I also loved living in the attic of a 17th century house with 18th century additions and going, every Sunday, to a 1900 wooden flat pack church which was meant to be the temporary solution to the Catholics in the area having only enough money to buy the house and the land. The congregation was smaller and more Scottish in 2009 although the university had long provided a steady stream of foreigners. There was a goodly handful of English people, too. 

"Canadians are not foreigners," trumpeted an Englishman. "You're British born somewhere else!"

The Edinburgh TLM community provided me with another set of ancestors: the elderly Scottish ladies who prepared, presided over and cleaned up after the After-Mass Tea and the elderly men (English and Scots) who also connected us to the history of the TLM's survival in Edinburgh. I pray for these four women and two men during every Sunday Mass, so I think of them often, too. As I've written before, I wonder what the tea ladies would think of my changes to the After-Mass Tea and if they are quietly exulting to see how much the community has grown.  

Tradition is not only books but people--specific people. It is not only liturgy but culture, a specific culture. There are immigrants who want to live in Scotland as though there were no Scots, no Scottish culture, no Scots ancestors to pray for, no past to plug into--just opportunities to exploit and riches to plunder. I met that kind of immigrant often enough in Toronto: "I like Canada, but I don't like Canadian people." "Canada didn't have a culture until we got here." I loathe that attitude, and I'd wipe out my foreign accent if I could. 

The Canadian philosopher Father Bernard Lonergan, SJ, was re-expressing St. Thomas Aquinas when he said "Only the concrete is good." What he meant was that there are real, specific things and real, specific people to whom to pay attention. Ideas are just ideas, thoughts just thoughts: an excellent thing for Lonerganians overly excited by the Master's thought-structures to remember. 

It is something the young have to learn, too: that the world--that is, God's Creation--is what it is and not what we imagine about it or what we want it to be or what random strangers say it is. 

It is so sad to see the young imprisoned by their imaginations. They say things like:

"All the boys I know are dumb." 

"All the girls I know are crazy feminists." 

"The world is too horrible to bring children into." 

"Maybe I'm sad because I was born in the wrong body." 

"I fall into sin when I dance, and therefore everybody else does, too." 

"I really like this author, so everything he says is true." 

"Canada/Scotland/England/Australia has no culture of its own." 

"This man frightens me, but if I get off the elevator, somebody will think I'm racist." 

"I read a book about this, so now I know everything I need to know about it."  

These are all lies. These are just fantasies preventing their captives from grasping reality, and as such they are evil. Very evil.

Only the concrete is good. 

O Apple Tree, Thou Art Sick

I'm afraid this post is going to sound like the stereotypical country song. In short, the apple tree is sick and most apples that appeared rotted on the branches. The roses are gone as they have been replaced by a wooden fence. Benedict Ambrose still needs wheelchairs. Yesterday a cute little dog suddenly bit me as I was striding past her to accompany some young friends to swing dancing class. (In this context I can write, "What a nasty little bitch.")  

The waiting time to speak to someone at the NHS hotline was 90 minutes, and this morning I am told by our local surgery that they can't see me and I must call someone at the NHS hotline. Happily I am not as frantic as I was yesterday evening, for it eventually dawned on me that my husband kept banging on about tetanus shots because there's almost no rabies in the UK. 

In happier news, I now have my very own website. Here it is. Long-time readers will want to bookmark it, for blogging here on Blogger, my online home since 2006, will be but sporadic. You will also be interested in the blogpost I took down to send elsewhere and has now been published here by Dr. Peter Kwasniewski. I'm delighted that the great Dr. K. wrote an introduction and that his son Julian included his own defence of dancing underneath. 

It's a long read, and it has enflamed the wrath of a small but vociferous group attached to the idea that social dancing is immoral. They say they have saints on their side, the Kwasniewskis and I and our backers in the comments boxes have other saints (and Scripture) on our side--it's all a jolly bunfight. It certainly proves our point against those commentators who initially scoffed and said, "No Catholic has problems with ballroom dancing! What are you even talking about?" Now commentators are wailing, "Oh why are you dividing the community with this Highly Controversial Topic?"

Or they were wailing. Dr. K has turned off the comments, as he was too busy or sleeping to moderate further. (Goodness, that makes me wonder which comments I haven't seen.)

While the battle raged online--principally over Facebook--I sat at the very back of an Edinburgh bus cleaning my dog bitten leg with an antiseptic wipe and then went to swing-dance class where men and women stood at a chaste distance from each other in a circle and learned the basic steps to the 8-count Lindy Hop. Afterwards I practised with one young friend while two other young friends danced up a storm with classmates or the Advanced People. It was great fun and my rage against stupid and irresponsible dog owners ("She's only a puppy!") dissipated as I danced. 

Here's something no-one has mentioned in the Catholic/Jansenist bunfight: the virtue of dancing in dispelling such very serious sins as wrath, sloth and pride. Everyone bangs on about lust, but as Julian K argues, social dances are too complicated for lust to take hold. Therefore, I would argue (as does Julian) that ballroom dancing might even prevent lust. It's 1-2-3 or 1-2-3-&-4 for three minutes, tops, and then onto the next person. Nobody swaying in a bear hug, as was common in my youth, to "Stairway to Heaven."

Of course, there may be people who are such slaves to concupiscence that merely clasping the hand, arm or shoulder blade of a random member of the opposite sex sends them into paroxysms of lust and longing. In that case, no, that person shouldn't dance. In fact, he or she should probably have a word with a good priest or a sympathetic psychiatrist. (Dr. Freud loathed Christianity, and we Christians really do have to pick our therapists with care.) All I ask is that they not tell everyone else they may not dance either. 

Anyway, with that happy thought, I will invite you to my wonderful new website, which is still under construction, so it will flourish and grow under your eyes. I hope it will encourage readers to discover, learn and practise the riches of social life that are our western Christian birthright. 

The Crab Walk

A hearty welcome to readers of Dr. Peter Kwasniewski's "Tradition & Sanity" substack (once the link is published). I was delighted when Dr. K invited me to send him my (refurbed) blog arguments that Catholics should dance because I am a great fan of his work, especially his Good Music, Sacred Music, And Silence.

Dr. K mentions in our collaborative piece Matt Platt's "A Different Drummer," which I recommend to everyone's prayerful reflection. It certainly strengthened my belief that good dances for Catholics should not be watered down with "discos"--that is, the use of contemporary recorded Top 40 music and the return to the usual flailing about once the waltz or reel is learned. However, if you are a huge fan of popular music recorded after 1955, be wary of grinding your teeth as you read. 

As I pour time and treasure into my social dancing project (a dedicated website is in development), I cannot help but be a little sad that my husband can only look on from his wheelchair. As I told him yesterday, he doesn't have cancer scares; he has unpleasant cancer surprises. His current cancer surprise has been beaten back with chemotherapy, but the shrinking tumours are leaving much nerve damage in their wake. 

Fortunately, Benedict Ambrose (as he is called in Webland) in not entirely paralyzed below the waist; he can still stand up and remain standing for short periods if he hangs onto something. If he has a railing on either side he can lurch up and down short flights of stairs, watching his feet to make sure they are doing what he wants them to do. B.A. can also, as we learned on Saturday, inch along a balcony walkway if he has only a single rail to hold. His neuro-physiotherapists call this move "The Crab Walk," which sounds like it could have been a dance popular in 1919.  

This Sunday's journey to and from Mass provided us with many opportunities to reflect that Edinburgh was not built with wheelchairs in mind. Considering the number of Scotsmen who lost limbs during the First World War (let alone the Second), it seems a shame it is only very recently that city planners began to think very seriously about making the kerbs (curbs) of pavements (sidewalks) wheelchair-accessible. 

That said, we had a lovely ramble around a local nature reserve on Saturday afternoon--I in my hiking boots and B.A. in his electric wheelchair--and enjoyed the bright, hot sunshine and the view of the Firth of Forth. It may have been the short Scottish summer's last hoorah; Sunday was windy, chilly, and grey, and today is rather damp. But Saturday was the kind of day you would not want to be anywhere in the world but right here.

After our idyll among the wildflowers, thistles and stoats, consuming croissants from a shop and coffee from a thermos, we went home for a rest and to prepare for a friend's birthday party. We had been extremely pleased to be invited--so much so that it took a while to remember that the friend and her husband live (like us) a the first (second) floor. Well, it took me a while. So belatedly we had to work out how many stairs there would be, and how many railings, and whether I should push B.A. there in a pushchair, or fold and carry his self-propelling wheelchair down our stairs and up theirs, or trot along contentedly behind his electric wheelchair and trust to his ability to crab-walk along the outside walkway. 

B.A. opted for the electric wheelchair, so I got it and its attendant ramp out of their hiding place, and B.A. flapped carefully down our stairs. We encountered friends on their way to the supermarket for more supplies as we rolled/strolled down the street, and our pleasure in the thought of the party increased. (I was even debuting a new pair of high-heeled shoes, for at last I have found a brand that doesn't hurt.) 

However, when we got to our friends' stairway, the real work of the day began. Oh, the stairs, flanked by railings were no problem, and I soon found a place to stash the heavy (and valuable) chair out of the sight of the road. However, the balcony is a long one for the semi-paralyzed, and during every moment of his Crab Walk, I was terrified that B.A. would simply topple over onto the cement paths below. 

It is not the least of the Lord's mercies that B.A.'s spinal troubles began when we were still relatively young and after I had spent two years or so working out in our local gym. Even wearing high heels, I could provide B.A. enough support to get through our friends' door and along their hallway to their sitting-room and, at last, a sofa. The same held true when, some hours later, we made the return journey, this time flanked by a half-dozen friends. Fed up, B.A. told me to stop hanging onto his jacket as he made his perilous-looking Crab Walk, so I left our friends to watch his feet, scurried to his wheelchair and drove it to the bottom of the staircase. 

Our host, looking rather harrowed (if I'm not just projecting) offered to go home with us and help B.A. up our stairs, but I demurred with thanks. The principal cause of B.A.'s mobility problems is a scrambled connection between his brain and his spine, but his brain seems to have worked out and become comfortable with our own staircase. What was new and scary was crab-walking a distance much longer than the ballet bar set up in our hallway, not to mention working out what to grab for balance on the route along our friends' elegant corridor. And, indeed, B.A. had no trouble getting up our stairs, even if, once he reached his self-propelling chair, he made a bee-line for bed. 

Silence the Pianos

I led my dance party's review of the Shim Sham a week ago last Sunday, and the next day something terrible happened. 

One of our swing-dance teachers died. 

We knew she was sick, and we knew she was in hospital. Our priest had said that day's Mass for her, and I told our little group that, too. The night before the party I had prayed the Rosary for her on my knees. 

I knew that she had cancer, and so did Benedict Ambrose. The two patients talked about it together at last month's party. She told B.A. that she was more worried for her husband than for herself, and B.A. told her that he was more worried for me than for himself. But none of us knew she was so close to death.

It was a week before I found out what had happened, for I didn't get around to writing to them to tell them about our Shim Sham review until the next Sunday. The surviving teacher, her husband, wrote that he was glad that we were keeping up with the Shim Sham, and it was a lovely legacy. 

It's so terrible that a lovely married couple who spread so much happiness through sharing their love of joyful dancing are now divided by death. It's unbelievably sad. I'm crushed, and I only got to know our teachers from November.

Of course, I also remembered them from classes I took a decade ago. When I contemplated adding swing dance to the Waltzing Party, they were the only swing teachers in town I was willing to risk introducing to our youngsters. To this day I don't know anything about their religious beliefs, philosophy or politics, but I did know that they were good teachers and had been married for over 20 years. 

It's so disheartening. First, it's an appalling tragedy for the widower, who has lost at one stroke both his wife and his dance partner. Second--or last, in the grand scheme of things, but second for me--my group have lost our teachers. And we weren't taught just dancing: we were shown what a very happy, companionate marriage can look like, even among (whisper it) non-Catholics. We watched a great lead interact with a great follow, and we saw how the two roles complemented each other. And at no point did our kind teachers ever betray that they might have thought we all might be the tiniest bit weird. Au contraire--they mentioned that we were snappy dressers, as indeed we are on Sundays. In fact, I would not  have been surprised to discover that their religion was jazz, their philosophy great pedagogy, and their politics vintage-style clothing.  

Am I ever likely to find such great teachers again? Today it seems unlikely. 

But I will carry on doing my bit to promote social dancing to tradition-minded Catholics because I firmly believe that good music and social dancing has a role to play in enriching and and consolidating the Catholic community. As we all know, Catholicism isn't just for Sundays, and it's not just for inside churches. It's for Friday and Saturday nights, too, and it encompasses not only explicitly devotional activities but traditional music and dancing, too. I just hope I can convince more Catholics of that. 

 

Pilgrimages and Gallantry

Bifil that in that seson on a day, 

In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay, 

Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage 

To Caunterbury with ful devout corage, 

At nyght were come into that hostelrye 

Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye 

Of sondry folk, by áventure y-falle 

In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle, 

That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde. 

Perhaps I am getting old, but I cannot imagine flirtation on the Chartres Pilgrimage. The morning start is too early, the streets bewildering, the banlieus menacing, the feet soon hurting. The woods are muddy and teem with ticks. Loud prayers, hymns and reflections shout from megaphones. Students assuage the pain with raucous songs. The campgrounds are ludicrously crowded. The pace is incredible. The queues for the portaloos would strike despair in the heart of a saint.

The Chartres Pilgrimage is meant to be penitential, and it is. The more people who go, the more penitential it is, and its leadership, like Europe, seems to be simultaneously proud of and dismayed by the ever-larger number of foreigners who turn up. At any rate, it would seem that Sartre-like resentment has been added to the rigours of Chartres, and Rosbif et Les Autres are being encouraged to stay at home and have our own pilgrimages, t*******, h*****. *

There are already kinder, gentler pilgrimages, and I'm not even thinking about the kind that involve busses, aeroplanes and a superabundance of Old Age Pensioners. I'm thinking of good old (i.e. new) devotional walking holidays, where feet do get a bit tired, but there's a glass of beer at some friendly hostelry at the end of the day. The pace is slower, and nobody shouts at anyone in French. I would like to go on such a pilgrimage myself, but my husband's health prevents it. So far I have only heard about them. 

And one thing I hear is that there is definitely scope for flirtation on such easy-going traditional pilgrimages. Young men who consider themselves of marriageable age survey the teenage girls before them and plan their attack, fall like wolves upon the fold, strike up conversations and introduce themselves. The teenage girls, carefully and tenderly guarded at home or in convent schools, discover that, as surely as if they were introduced at a Debutante Ball, they are now Out. 

This can be good, and this can be bad. It's good because traditional Catholic communities are small and far-flung and members meeting each other on pilgrimage unites, develops, and strengthens them. It's good because young men and women of marriageable age (although for the record I do not consider teenagers to be of marriageable age) should have plentiful opportunities to find a spouse within the Church. It's good because teenage girls need to learn how to handle male attention some time, and pilgrimage is a relatively safe place to do that. 

But only relatively. For one thing, not everyone brings their parents, so there is no natural check or guard upon the behaviour of the young people who are, after all, strangers or near-strangers to each other. A 40-year-old father of six knows that his 15-year-old daughter is too young to be chatted up by a pipe-smoking 22-year-old, but the 22-year-old might not think so. A mother who has prayed all his life for her son to be spared the chaos she grew up in will not be delighted when he attaches his affections to a young convert whose family are the terror of their housing estate. **

For another, some pilgrims are weird. Let no-one doubt my attachment to the Traditional Latin Mass or the communities that spring up about it! I have poured out time, treasure and tea on behalf of the local TLM for fifteen years now, and I demand the right to tell the unfortunate truth that not all Trads are good, Harry. Some--I hope only a few--have ideas about women shared by the godless Boomers who ran communes in the 1960s. 

Were I the queen of the world, I would have a designated chaperone--a woman over 30--for every five young pilgrims under 25. My ideal chaplain chaperone would be quiet but watchful, someone who likes young people and can be trusted with their secrets but also will know when to tell a young man to buzz off and how to tell a young lady without offence to cool it. 

It seems crazy to me that chaperonage--one of the very useful roles of older women--was killed off in or by World War II, when it continues to be so clearly necessary. The fact is that most girls do not leave the home- or all-female schoolroom equipped to deal with male attention, let alone with the ability to discover swiftly what kind of men they are meeting or what kind of homes produced them. There should be a social halfway house, and well-chaperoned events, like pilgrimages, could be it.

All that said, in the absence of properly designated chaperones, there are, I believe, usually older women around on a pilgrimage, and if a girl finds herself unable to cope with ardent male attention, she should ask one of them for help. (Of course, she might also try the priest chaplain.) 

This rule-of-thumb is true for the public street, by the way. Many years ago I was the object of North African gallantry in a bus station in Frankfurt, and although I managed at last to extricate myself, the German student I complained to afterwards asked in bewilderment why I had not simply asked one of the old German ladies around to help me. The reasons were that I was too embarrassed and that I didn't realize then that the OGL were longing to save me from the Young Man of Southern Appearance (to quote Frankfurter "Wanted" posters) and were only waiting for me to say the word. 

Thus, dear young ladies, if ever in over your heads in a social situation, please say the word so that your spiritual mothers can save you. In their absence, shouting LEAVE ME ALONE is known to be effective, as is simply running away. 

*To be honest, these are Canadian French swears. I don't know any France French swears. 

** In case I have inadvertently hit the mark, know that I am not referring to specific individuals. I am  definitely too old and beset by earthly cares to enjoy creating Drama.

August Dance with Jug

Surely I cannot be the only hostess in the world who consistently has more young men than, or as many young men as, young women at her dances. Nevertheless, this seems to be an unusual occurrence elsewhere. And it is too bad for elsewhere for, as it happens, gentlemen are usually the leads and therefore the ones who really have to know the steps. Ladies just need a general idea and the willingness to read directional cues, like thoughtful lawnmowers. 

At any rate, our waltzing teacher was not at all nonplussed when, at 2:30 pm, I presented her with five young men and no women. (Two girls turned up about 10 minutes afterwards, and very glad was I to see them.) She simply gathered the boys up and led them down the floor in British Dance Council-approved fashion. After some time, she turned her attention to the ladies' auxiliary, and we meekly backed down the hall, also according to the strictures of the BDC. Eventually we were asked to form couples, and I could see my partner's fierce masculine intelligence ticking away. How happy was I not to be a lead; thinking while dancing is not my USP.  

For some reason Natural Turn--Closed Change--Reverse Turn--Closed Change is much more difficult done according to Ballroom than according to YouTube. However, practice makes perfect, and it is great fun to watch the boys dance up the wooden floor like the Jets in West Side Story. Meanwhile I am still slavishly grateful to have found a professional ballroom instructor. When she asked if we would like to learn the chassé and the whisk, I trembled but affirmed. 

After our hesitant beginning with the chassé and the whisk, we had a break. Break featured chocolate chip cookies and a plastic jug of blackcurrant squash. Having been caught plastic jug-stealing in the parish hall by my Novus Ordo Opposite Number, this month I decided it was time to buy my own, no excuses. Happily, Tesco was having a sale, so I got a decent one for about £4. 

A short discursion for potential hostesses: one factor in planning dance parties is calculating how few utensils you can decently provide. Having begun my parties in our well-stocked parish hall, I expected always to provide a proper tea-and-coffee set, with biscuits and cakes on porcelain plates and crisps (chips) in capacious bowls. However, when we moved to a bigger hall down the street, I discovered that I would have to bring my own tea-and-coffee set, plus coffee and tea making equipment, and this necessitated a car. My husband and I do not have a car, and although two or three of the guests do have cars, it seems a great pity to get them to drive out to our far-flung neighbourhood more than twice a year.

Fortunately, I discovered that the guests are not very interested in mid-afternoon tea-and-coffee after all. They also do not seem to feel that the use of paper cups for squash betrays the goal of shoring up Western Civilization. Thus, yesterday I was able to pack everything needed for the dance in my knapsack and my husband's wheelchair bag: notebook, pen, donation box, Bluetooth speaker, biscuit tin, squash, paper napkins, paper cups, marker (to write names on paper cups), and jug. 

But I am forgetting my skinny 4-foot-high cardboard box. This was my instructional poster, scrawled out by me on Saturday morning after my Shim Sham rehearsal. Sadly, one of our swing-dancing teachers is sick, so leading the swing component of the dance party fell to me. Like striking up conversations in Polish when you're not, this is an example of stretching your comfort zone, by the way. I highly recommend it for civilization-preserving activities. And, like dancing, the more often you stretch your comfort zone, the easier it gets. 

Anyway, I taped up my poster during the break, and at 3:50 pm I began a half-hour Shim Sham review. It was difficult to gauge how this was going, as I had my back towards everybody, but Benedict Ambrose assured me afterwards that there had been a very energetic and cheerful atmosphere. 

There followed the "Free Dance" period during which there was some dancing. However, there was as much or more sitting about silently or chatting with other guests or with the hosts, if we count Benedict Ambrose as a host, and perhaps we should. Free Dance, by the way, is an excellent opportunity for girls to practise sitting suffering in silence (or making desultory chitchat) while waiting to be asked to dance. I could write an entire and extremely unpopular blogpost on this topic. 

Summed up, my logic is this: if women constantly ask men to dance, men will not ask women to dance because they know they don't have to. And if they don't have to, they will never develop the courage necessary to ask women to dance. (Or, worse, they will stop going to dances altogether because sometimes a fellow just wants to rest, gosh darn it.) And if they don't develop the courage necessary to ask women to dance, they won't develop the easy charm helpful for asking women out for coffee, let alone asking us to marry them. And if men don't ask women to marry them, Western Civilization will tank. 

Update: Meanwhile, there is a number of other reasons why men don't ask women to dance. The music might be too fast for them, or they're uncertain of the steps, or they need to take a breather, or they've just been refused/criticized by other girls and are regrowing their courage, or all the women seem to be in deep conversations and they don't want to bother them. 

As I myself practise suffering in silence at big public swing-dances while waiting to be asked, I notice women of great talent--veterans of the Edinburgh swing-dance scene--rushing about to ask men to dance with them. I have also introduced male veterans to female friends and been aggrieved these men didn't ask the women to dance. Fortunately, this was not true of the last big public ceilidh dance I attended. Boomer and Gen-X men were out in full force, asking women of all generations to dance with them. They were delightful, and they made the ceilidh night a great success.  

Update: To be strictly honest, because I am not at all certain of being asked to dance at big public swing-dances, I don't often go to them. After public swing lessons I don't stay for socials unless I am with friends. There's a lesson for me as an organizer in that. 

As promised, "Ain't What You Do" sounded forth at one point, and I leapt before the poster to lead the Shim Sham anew. The mad lazy license of the "Free Dance" will always be tempered by the stern call of the Shim Sham from now on, so that all guests (and I) will become note perfect. How grateful they will be when, alone and palely loitering in some foreign dance hall, the crowd erupts into the Shim Sham and for 2 minutes and 35 seconds, they will be at one with it. The psychological boost they derive thereby may be a game changer. 

B.A. held court from his wheelchair, from which he had watched the dancing lessons when not reading the Spectator. The dance pro offered to teach him how to waltz using his wheelchair, but B.A. demurred.  

Anyway, although the company was small, the dance was great fun and also highly instructive from a skillset point of view. I am now looking forward to September's party and the return of those currently on holiday from Auld Reekie. 

When I was a Spider

I went looking for emails related to my spider role and was pleased to discover I wrote it up for the Scottish Catholic Observer in 2017. The Guides have now grown up and our TLM demographics have shifted even more, so posting this is really an exercise in nostalgia.  

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Catholic lady without children must be in want of a Brownie troop. So my friend Julienne, the co-founder of the Guides of Saint Joseph, apparently believes. She brings up the possibility at the end of Committee meetings, and I am invited to Guide events. Sometimes Claire, the Guide Leader, just needs an extra adult around, but I suspect that a plot to overcome my reluctance to found the Brownies is afoot. 

When I first came to Scotland, I wondered at Mass where all the young women were. It was a strange quirk of the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter’s Mass then that men outnumbered women 3:1. The choir were all men. The servers were (and are) all men. Young university men came on Sundays bleary-eyed from the night before. There were no other single women aged between 25 and 40; my husband-to-be proposed marriage within ten days of meeting me. This was quite nice, and I befriended the single women who appeared later, but there didn’t seem much for us to do. I couldn’t believe my eyes the Sunday a band of girls in navy berets and homemade Guide uniforms came marching up the aisle.  

The mothers had organized something! In my excitement, I suggested to the foundress that the Guides come to my house for tea. Ann, mother of four, smiled craftily and added me to her mental Rolodex. Before I knew it, there were eight Guides camping in our dining-room and two twenty-something leaders in possession of my study. I gave them lectures about Courageous Catholic Women, we fed them dinner on the front lawn, and we showed them the first half of Quo Vadis through a projector on the wall. The next morning, the leaders had the Guides up to do calisthenics and marched us all off to Mass.

The next step was to add me to the Committee. Thoroughly charmed by the girls and their leaders, I agreed to join. I was asked for the first time if I would like to become the future Brownie leader and was invited to go to the Guides’ weekend camp. 

The Guides of Saint Joseph are mad about camping. In the summer they camp for two weeks straight. They camp in all weathers. At this first weekend camp, I ended up on my knees, praying five decades of the Rosary in the mud. Since their French leaders belong to the Scouts and Guides of Riaumont, traditional Catholic devotions are at the heart of the Guides’ activities. 

The girls’ natural piety really warms the heart of an old Canadian Girl Guide like me. When I was a Girl Guide thirty-odd years ago, camping involved passing a copy of The Thorn Birds around a tent. When I helped out with the Guides of Saint Joseph’s summer camp, I overheard two dish-washers discussing the liturgy. I don’t think they know about The Thorn Birds, and they’d be horrified if I told them.   

The Guides had made a kitchen out of sticks, complete with space for the washbasins. By the end of the first week, they had a flagpole, a parade ground with benches, a kitchen, a latrine, showers, and three separate camps, one per patrol and one for the leaders. Their days began and ended with prayer. The campfires—which included songs, skits and dramatic presentations—involved an astonishing level of creativity. I thought the leaders’ play—in which Claire played Robert the Bruce and I played the famous spider---was clever, but the Guides put us to shame. Needless to say, Scottish history and citizenship is also very important to the Guides of Saint Joseph, who gather from all over Scotland.  

What kind of girls do we want to raise? I don’t have children myself, but as a resident of Scotland and a Catholic, I feel I have a stake in this question. If you are what you consume, and if girls consume nothing but pop culture, we may be in for a nation of wannabe glamour models and reality TV stars. Organisations like the Girl Guides of Saint Joseph offer a world apart from the smartphone; indeed they offer a world of camping, woodcraft, history, citizenship, creativity, sisterhood and living faith. They offer an antidote to adolescent angst and boredom. When they last got together, four of the teenaged Guides spent their Saturday dressed up in costumes playing whist, running around outdoors, and then acting out the French Revolution. 

“Did the aristos die well or screaming?” I asked.

“Oh, very well,” said their executioner. “They sang Aves.”

We never did found the Brownies.  Well, never say never, I suppose! 

Hanging in there

I have a dream that one day I will get right back down to the business of writing on a single theme every day. In the meantime, I have been adding "project manager" to my collection of titles. The most recently completed project is a new fence and gate surrounding our back garden. There is also a new patio awaiting a new shed/electric wheelchair garage. 

Eventually I will have to leave a nice message on the "Trusted Tradesperson" site, suppressing my gloom over the state of the raised bed (now an unhappy mass of earth, rubble and distressed blackcurrant bush)  and dismay that the workmen put the large half-barrel of herb garden in the noxious shade. However, I solved the latter problem by appealing to one male neighbour and then another, and between the two of them, they got the rosemary & co. back into the sun. 

This brought our downstairs neighbour outside, and thus there was an impromptu meeting of the building association, as it were, the retired housekeeper and retired ship's cook exchanging enthusiasms over our new gate and the barber shrugging off admiration for his superhuman strength to go back to his pigeons. This little gang is a large part of the reason why Benedict Ambrose and I do not pack it in, get back on the mortgage treadmill, and buy a ground floor flat somewhere. You can't buy good neighbours.

This incidentally reminds me of an old sorrow of my mother's, back when she was in her twenties and thirties. In short, her mother often chatted with her next door neighbour over the fence (was there even a fence?), and so she envisioned talking to her own neighbours over her own fence. Alas, for ten years at least, the neighbours weren't available to speak to. On one side was a housebound very elderly woman and her housekeeper, and on the other a very cranky old woman who didn't like children, until a couple with two jobs but no children moved in and hemmed themselves behind high (to me) wooden slats. 

I often think of this when I put the laundry out when one or another of my neighbours is hanging theirs up.  We generally exchange comfortable remarks about the weather, and how B.A. is, and whether or not it is time again to cut the grass. Mercifully nobody mentions politics, although one neighbour occasionally solicits my opinion of the latest natural disaster (usually forest fires) to befall Canada. 

Another first: yesterday I clambered up a ladder to put up a blind with the help of borrowed cordless drill. I was surprised at how physically demanding this was and also frustrated that my initial measurements were off by a small but nevertheless important fraction. Benedict Ambrose, who showed me how to put the drill bit in, shouted encouragement from the sitting room until he decided he'd better wheel directly into multipurpose room to watch. At last the job was done, and we are another step forward in improving the flat. 

I was hoping to add space and colour to our sad little hall, but that will have to wait. 

Shim Sham, Cieszę Się

"I have two left feet," one of my guests told me at the last waltzing party.

"Oh, me too," I said fervently, and he looked mildly surprised. 

The thing is, there are just so many enjoyable activities that I find extremely difficult until, with enough practice, I don't. These include dancing, speaking in foreign languages, playing a musical instrument, singing beside trained singers, and talking to strangers. There's an endless list of things for which I have no talent but are so "worth doing that they are worth doing badly," as G. K. Chesterton said. 

Fortunately, I have discovered that I can improve my performance in these things with sufficient practice. (I have also learned that hating yourself for being so stupid greatly inhibits practice's efficacy.) Perhaps one day I will have accumulated enough hours of hard work that people will think I am naturally talented. (Ha!) 

As I mentioned earlier, we were taught the Shim Sham at my last party. Although I paid attention, the "half breaks" confused me very much. I thus spent some time every morning practising the Shim Sham with my computer and a mirror while wearing hiking boots to support my aching ankle. I also attended our instructors' normal public class for a second lesson on the Shim Sham and discovered I had regressed. Stupid half breaks.

Nevertheless, I spoke very enthusiastically about the Shim Sham to some friends when B.A. and I were staying at their place last weekend. Despite my two left feet, I get very excited when I talk about dance parties and plans for more ticketed dances. I can bore for Scotland on the subject. Nevertheless, I piqued my hostess' interest enough for her to ask me to illustrate the Shim Sham. And, since we were in a big kitchen, and I had drunk a sufficient quantity of good red wine, and I had "It Ain't What You Do" on my smartphone, I complied. 

And here's the thing: I discovered that for the first time I wasn't just learning or practising. Although I wasn't executing the steps perfectly, I was actually dancing. It was like what they say about sports: you practise so that you can play. It's the same thing with languages: you practise so that you can read or (even better) converse.

Maybe this shouldn't be such a revelation to me. However, it's a liberating thought that it is the norm to have "two left feet" or to be "bad at languages" or "terrible at piano" until and unless you do sufficient practice. It fills every complicated activity with hope: perhaps with enough coaching and study I could even master trigonometry! (I'm not actually sure what trigonometry is, but I do know it is important for rocket science.) Maybe with enough coaching and practice almost anyone can do almost anything! 

The thought makes me happy, and--incidentally--Cieszę się (which I roughly pronounce cheh-shay-sheh) means "I'm glad." Meanwhile, I've gone back to studying Polish and Italian every day, and I wrote a letter to my goddaughter in Polish for the first time. I'm not sure she can read yet, but her mum or dad will read it to her, and they can correct my mistakes as they go. (The great scary drawback to speaking to a small child in her own language is that she is still learning it from adults and so repeats your mistakes. Eek!) 

Essential Service

An occupational therapist dropped in this week to gather notes for a report to the council (i.e. local government). He was expected in the afternoon, so Benedict Ambrose came home early from work, just before I had to chair on online meeting. 

B.A.phoned from the pavement outside our terrace, I rushed down the stairs to unlock the cupboard, I carried the ramp to the street, and B.A. rolled down into our pedestrian alley. I then carried the ramp to the stair leading to the path to our staircase, and B.A. drove up it. Then I carried the ramp back to its hiding place, watched B.A. pick his difficult way up our stairs, drove the wheelchair into the cupboard, locked the door and raced back into my office/bedroom/dining-room. We left the door open for the O.T., which was just as well, as he arrived early, right while I was in my meeting. When the meeting was over, I went into the sitting-room to offer the O.T. a cup of tea. 

I had scrubbed the kitchen floor that morning, in case the O.T. wanted to have a look. However, another O.T. had already taken the measure of the indoor spaces, and this O.T. was interested only in the outdoors. He turned down the cup of tea and listened to our plan for creating a new space in the garden for a wheelchair. The council, he said, would not pay for this unless it made B.A. independent. By this he meant independent of me, which made me blink.

"You won't be here all the time," he stated, as if it were common for women to leave their wheelchair-bound husbands alone at home and go to Ibiza with the girls. (That said, I did go to Sussex with my mother.)

B.A. and I were perfectly happy for him to be made independent if it meant the council would spring for a new concrete path into the garden, more railings, a wheelchair garage, and permanent ramps. In this scenario, B.A. would go down the stairs, hanging onto the railings at usual, turn around, hold onto to new railings, and walk straight into a new shed, where he would sit himself down, drive out and then down a council-built ramp and finally up a second council-built ramp to the street. Independence!  

When I went with the O.T. to look at the proposed route, however, we hit a snag: the stair from the residents' path to the alley is so high, any ramp would have to be 12 feet long, and that would block the access of other residents. The council is very strict about the Building Code. The step from the alley to the street is doable.

I am grateful to the nation that it robs Peter (me, though taxes) to pay Paul (B.A., through disability allowance), that it sent an O.T. at all, and that it was open to paying to make B.A. physically independent. Nevertheless, I am pondering what a communist-era Pole would do in this situation. Perhaps he would make his own ramp down the too-high step, ignoring the Building Code, and then summon back the O.T. 

"Citizen, we were mistaken. There is already a ramp along the too-high step. It looks like it has been there for many years."

"Well, Citizen, we will in that case send out a team."

Of course, the team might destroy the illegal step instead of just going ahead with the works. Or it might leave the step and never get around to the works. But that is a moot point, for we live not in communist-era Poland but in Two-Tier Britain, so I did what I always do and made an appointment with an independent contractor to give us an estimate.

(An estimate for the garden works, I mean. A bigger problem with the stair, in my view, is that neither we nor the council own it. According to the O.T., it belongs to the landlady of the flat directly beside it.)

I find the idea of being independent from one's own spouse almost amusing, and it goes to show how little the modern state values the institution. Perhaps it sees marriage as a Comrades-with-Benefits situation, in which two autonomous individuals trade goods and services. Fortunately, marriage is so woven into Scottish culture and society, that with enough confidence ("I am his WIFE!") a married person can prod others into older ways of thought. 

Meanwhile, I have a new appreciation of marriage from making B.A.'s breakfast and lunch and going out every morning to fetch his wheelchair and ramp. At first these things made me grumpy--rushing about as soon as I wake up is not my usual mode--but then B.A. told me how much me making breakfast and lunch really make to his energy level. 

His words were like a magic charm: I am making a difference! Perhaps if every husband told his wife how much making his meals (picking up his socks, etc.) made a difference to him, there would not have been quite so much divorce in the 20th century. And to be fair, I suppose wives should tell their husbands the same thing. Their salaries make a difference. Their yard work makes a difference. Any housework they do makes a difference. 

It will be a happy day when Benedict Ambrose can stand and walk unaided, but until then I will derive satisfaction from the fact that I am providing him--and Scotland--with the essential service of ensuring that he gets to work in the morning.  

 

Introductions, Again

A strange paradox: my interest in social life is fuelled by unhappy memories. It's governed by a past tense Golden Rule: "Don't do unto others what has been done to you that you didn't like." It is also shot through with a particular concern for girls and young women because I have been both, and that is when I collected the bulk of my unhappy social memories. 

Many of them involve scanning rooms of strangers, trying to find the courage to talk to one, and standing along some wall or other, hoping to be asked to dance. 

My worst dance trauma ever occurred when I was in my co-ed primary school and the older grades were led to the gymnasium for a disco. (What were the teachers thinking?) This admission will stagger my young friends, but I asked a dozen or more (possibly 20) boys to dance, and every single one of them said 'No'. 

As I was only 12, I did not know that boys are pack animals who are scarcely going to say 'Yes' to a girl after overhearing several other boys say 'No.' I also did not know that boys tease each other unmercifully over such things. It did not penetrate my brain that mainstream media's assertions that girls can ask boys to dance (or on dates) were not universally believed, particularly not by the children of recent immigrants from central, eastern, and southern Europe. What I didn't know was a lot, and it took me a very long time to stop believing everything I read in printed material even when it conflicted with Real Life. 

In my opinion, the most gentlemanly thing a gentleman can do at a dance is ask a girl to dance before she is overwhelmed by the temptation to ask him. And if it is too late, he must, of course, say 'Yes.' 

Fact of social life: Girls love to dance. If they are at a dance, they are there to dance. And every last one of them is sister to that poor red-haired 12-year-old who was turned down by 20 or so boys and then led back to her classroom fighting tears. The success of a dance lies on the shoulders of men; all that is asked of us women is that we be pleasant--and (literally) tread carefully. As a hostess, I must say I am so, so grateful when I see "our boys" ask girls--especially girls they don't know--to dance (and then brag about them to friends back in Canada).

Of course, it is easier for a gentleman to ask a lady to dance--or to talk to her at all--if he has been introduced to her. And this is the real subject of my post, almost lost in the harrowing description of my childhood humiliation: the importance of introductions. 

I love to write about introductions because--after washing and putting on clean clothes appropriate to an occasion--they are the beginning of social life. They are so easy to do, and yet people often forget to do them. Whenever you accompany a friend or acquaintance somewhere where you know many people they don't know, you are bound by the laws of Western Civilization to introduce them around. This is why older people instinctually apologize if they forget to do it at once. "I'm so sorry! Janet, this is Peter. Peter, Janet." 

 

By the way, there is no elder discrimination clause in this law of Western Civilization. Don't just introduce your peers to other peers. If there are elderly people you know at an event, you should introduce your friend or acquaintance to them, too--unless the elderly people have given you good reason not to, of course. There are self-absorbed elderly men who could bore for Britain. There are jealous elderly women who hate young women. However--and I cannot stress this enough--older, established people who like younger people often want to be of service to younger people, and it is in younger people's interests to know these excellent folk. 

(A more recent unpleasant social memory has popped into mind, but I will grab the lump of gold from the silt: it is a pleasant young Czech student in Poland discovering that a grey-haired 50-something American student was not just the ancient lump of Yankeedom the other young students saw but someone rather high up in the American civil service. They exchanged cards.) 

It sometimes happens that young people I don't know turn up at my Waltzing Parties, and the usual thing is that one of the regulars introduces him or her or them to me. This is 100% correct, and I wish everyone remembered to do this, for I am so busy that I forget to seek them out and make the introductions myself. It is more than a polite acknowledgement that I am the hostess of the party, it's a way of making sure the guests are properly welcomed and put at ease. 

(This reminds me that I must ask any newcomers about their current dancing knowledge before the party starts. And it would also be a good idea to introduce everyone individually to the dance instructors. Why have I not thought of this before?)

Meanwhile, a very good way to survive a social event where you don't know anybody, or you haven't been introduced yet and your social butterfly pal is nowhere to be seen, is to find someone sitting or standing alone, march up to them and introduce yourself. Your discomfort in doing that should serve as a reminder of the crucial importance in social life of proper introductions. 

I'll just end by saying that although there are numerous swing-dancing events in Edinburgh, complete with live bands whom I would love to hear, I don't feel comfortable going to them on my own. In my experience (staggered over several years), not enough is done to make newcomers feel welcome. 

Sitting behind a table checking names is not hospitality. Events need real hosts or hostesses to look out for the paying guests, especially as so many are unaccompanied women. When more effort is made to ensure that the elderly and the alone are actually dancing at public dances, then I will believe the current protestations of wanting more "diversity" and "inclusion" are sincere. 

 

Line of Dance/Line Dance July

Today I am babying my left ankle, which I have re-injured. One of the drawbacks of being an "unpaid carer" is that we aren't usually trained and so we sometimes get hurt. Some days ago I learned the hard way that it is a bad idea to operate an electric wheelchair in a tight space while wearing sandals. Crunch. 

Still, it beats having a stroke; I found a study that says carers are more likely to have strokes. In fact, we are more than twice as likely to suffer from poor health than "people without caring responsibilities." And as 5 million people in England and Wales--and 800,0000 in Scotland (!) are unpaid carers, this is surely a serious problem. That said, it's better to be an unpaid carer than stuck in a wheelchair.  

Benedict Ambrose came along to this month's Waltzing Party in his electric wheelchair, and a kindly janitor met us at the usual entrance to the hall and directed B.A. to the ramp on the other side and the accessible door. The sun shone through the Gothic windows on the golden wood of the dance floor, and it was only 2:05 PM, which meant that I could just relax and dance a few steps on my own. 

B.A. drove into the other hall, formerly the nave of a Victorian-era Presbyterian church, and sang Marian anthems to the excellent acoustics. Then the professional ballroom dance teacher I had managed to inveigle into coming into Edinburgh on a Sunday arrived, and there was some low-key fuss about wi-fi and how the background music would be played, etc. (Note to self: write to office for wifi password.) When the majority of the guests were assembled, B.A. (senior male present) led us in the Prayer to St. Michael, and then I handed over the company to the waltz instructor at 2:30 on the dot. 

To my great delight, there were 20 of us dancers this time: ten men, ten women. The teacher is used to teaching couples, and there was only one among us, so I got everyone else to pair up by height, as usual. 

The first thing the teacher did was ask us to waltz, so she could judge where we were in our knowledge. What concerned her most, it turned out, is that we weren't traveling around the room but more-or-less just waltzing on the spot. Thus, the first thing she did was teach us how to turn in the corners, and then she worked us into dancing a proper "Natural Turn--Close Change--Reverse Turn--Close Change" according to the Line of Dance.  

"I feel Judged," I joked to a dance partner--although as usual the person judging my teaching skills was myself, for I was not able to get my head around the dance floor compass diagrams, when I first found out about them, and so ignored them. 

We were worked very hard for an hour, and then we had a short break for squash, banana bread, crisps and cookies. I ran about replenishing the plastic jug I had borrowed from the parish hall. (Foreshadowing of drama, one made more acute by a too-long story about the second borrowed jug.) Then I handed the floor over to our swing-dance teachers, and we were instructed in the mysteries of the Shim Sham, a handwritten list of the steps blue-tacked to the wall. 

When the teachers first proposed teaching our group Solo Jazz steps, I thought uneasily about the strictures of Dr. Peter Kwasniewski as tabled in his excellent Good Music, Sacred Music, and Silence. Swing-dance is just on the line for what Dr. K believes is acceptable, and the disintegration of proper partner dancing into everyone doing their own thing is to be deplored. However, I recalled that some Solo Jazz is actually done in groups. A memory of feeling confused, left-out and then wistful at a standard Edinburgh swing-dance social popped up: all the old hands had suddenly broken out into the Shim Sham, and it looked fun. 

The Shim Sham started life in 1928 as a tap dance, and in 1932 it was adapted for the Lindy Hop. In the 1990s, it basically became the Lindy Hop World anthem. (No matter where you go in the world, it is always the same, which reminds me of something...) It contains a routine of 4 patterns, which are repeated with "freezes", and then there are two "boogie back and boogie forwards", followed by two "boogie back and Shorty George forwards". Then, for the rest of the song, the crowd divides into partners and dances the Lindy Hop. 

Not pondering how difficult it would be to teach several Solo Jazz steps in 50 minutes, I requested the Shim Sham, and the Shim Sham we got. It begins with a sort of stomp, and to the accompaniment of enthusiastic Trad Catholic stomping, I re-hurt my poor ankle. (Moral of story: Don't actually stomp.) But the important thing is that my guests seemed to enjoy it. And we will review the Shim Sham next month, and then play "T'aint What You Do" at parties every month until the Shim Sham is firmly embedded in our muscle memories. 

It would be very amusing if the Dance Party party did a flashmob Shim Sham in the car park after Mass one day; that would certainly startle any regular (read: Novus Ordo) parishioners still about. Would they read a theological-liturgical message in the expression "It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it"?  But what is more likely is that my young friends would find themselves well-equipped should they find themselves in some foreign dance hall when everyone else starts to paw the floor like counting horses. 

After class was Free Dance time. Free Dance time is an exercise of Men's Liberation. Men are free to do what they like. They may ask ladies to dance, or they may sit around chatting, or they may stand by the refreshments table and eat a lot of crisps. Naturally, this staggering license is tempered by chivalry or having a sister with power to command. 

Personally, I fiddled with the music and a borrowed speaker and fielded the suggestions and critiques of our new waltzing teacher, whose own phone contained many, many pop songs in 3/4 time. My beloved Miłość Ci Wszystko Wybaczy  ("Love will forgive you everything") is apparently Not Ballroom. "Vito's Waltz," however, is Ballroom and was indeed more popular with the group--and the teacher, who propelled me around the room, offering excellent advice. 

"The Blue Danube" was next--the teacher made a face. "This is Viennese Waltz," she said and told the gaily dancing brother-and-sister duo that they weren't dancing fast enough. ("We're tired," they cheerfully replied). Alas, this incredibly knowledgable teacher cannot come next month, so leading the review will probably be up to me. 

We ended with a swing tune, which was ably provided by the Shim Sham teachers. Free Dance time is regrettably short, although this particular hall janitor was very nice about our tardy leave-taking. I ran about some more, washing jugs and packing up. Benedict Ambrose socialized, and afterwards he told me how impressed he had been by the whole thing. The waltz he saw akin to a feast and the Shim Sham to a delectable dessert pastry. 

We had this amiable conversation on our way back to the parish hall, where I hoped to sneak in the two borrowed plastic jugs. Alas, the door was open, and my Opposite Number of the Novus Ordo Mass was doing an inventory. Apparently she had just sent out an email asking where the jugs were. 

Busted. Totally busted. Really, I need to buy my own plastic jug, but I can't find one I like.

 . 

Il Taglio

Il nostro vicino della porta accanto fa il barbiere. Qualche volta durante gli anni ha proposto di tagliere i capelli di Benedetto Ambroglio, ma mio marito era troppo imbarazzato per accettare. Il problema era questo: non sapeva che O. si aspettasse un pagamento o no. Ed ovviamente è un argomento molto delicato in Scozia, particolarmente tra vicini. Allora, B.A. non ha accettato mai e ha evitato il suo negozio sulla via del ponte.

Comunque, B.A. ha cambiato idea dopo O. i S. hanno pulito insieme l’armadio a muro per la sedia a rotelle. Quando mi ha detto che aveva bisogno di un taglio, l’ho incoraggiato ad andare al negozio di O. Se B.A. volesse visitare un barbiere, meglio che pagherebbe il nostro vicino. Pensavo che dovessimo pagarlo oppure dargli l’opportunità di fare un buon’ azione, quello che preferisce. E se O. non fosse stato nel suo negozio, avremmo potuto pagare il suo impiegato. 

 

Allora, il sabato siamo andati alla via del ponte per un taglio. Abbiamo visto attraverso la vetrina che O. era lì, tagliando i capelli. Un altro ci ha salutato all’ingresso, ma c’era un problema insuperabile: la soglia d’ingresso era troppo alta. B.A. non poteva entrare con la sedia a rotelle elettrica. A questo momento, O. ha lasciato il suo cliente per darci un benvenuto, ma abbiamo dovuto scusarci perché non potevamo entrare. Ma O. ha risposto che lui ci troverà a casa il domani e lì darà B.A. un taglio.

 

Allora, il giorno dopo, una domenica, io e B.A. siamo ritornati molto presto del tè dopo la messa e abbiamo trovato O. nel suo giardino (con i suoi piccioni viaggiatori, ma c’è un’altra storia). Siccome il tempo faceva bello, il nostro vicino ha tagliato i capelli di B.A. fuori accanto delle nostre scale. (Ho fatto io una foto del quest’ atto di vicinato da sopra.) Ed ovviamente ha rifiutato un pagamento.

 

Adesso abbiamo un nuovo problema. Cosa dovremmo fare per O.? Dopo il mio presente di flapjacks, la sua partner ci ha dato una borsa di zuppa in scatola. Comincia parere come una corsa agli armamenti della gentilezza.