danced

They used to say that here, way back in the day, as a question. ‘Are you going to the dancing?’ possibly without a ‘g’ at the end. There were many dances here, fiddles playing, easily once a month and just for the fun of it. When I think about those times, no television, no mobiles nor computers and when Wifi meant the wife, the food provider and the marching ferocious woman storming the pub, intent on the removal of her husband. I saw it often, laughed as he, the Big Provider was dragged out and pushed into the fishbox at the arse of a tractor, whilst she, the Wifi, carted him home for a dry out, till the next time he managed to escape. And he would, and did, many many times over, always with the same result. I recall one evening in the pub when someone came in saying, She’s on her way and I watched him falter, this Big Provider. Never underestimate a determinedly powerful woman. Those days are gone, as have all those spicy, fun, naughty, brilliant characters and we have no regular dances these days because the whole frickin world has chosen to stay home, to watch screens, to scroll nonsense, and, worse, to believe it’s all true. To feel ok about not interacting with other humans. There’s no longevity in that state. Evidence proves that, the escalation of mental troubles and so on and so on.

To the dance. We don’t have them here as we once did. I’ve already said that, so I think wide, not forward, not back, but wide. If we were taught, really taught to think wide, I believe we would evolve from this cocoon state, one which our teens are thinking means ‘butterfly’ at the end, but which means nothing of the sort, into a determined breakout. Punch the walls. Don’t accept the dark. You know who and how you want to be, but you/we all have been duped. The way forward is community, other people, a conjoining in something, anything, because, and this is fact, AI can be very helpful, but it has no heart, no mind, no touch, no cuddles, isn’t there when you slip in the rain, can’t help you lift wood in for the fire, won’t hold you when you cry, make tea for you, sit with you in the dark hours when you cannot sleep and which will reach out, a genuine care in its eyes, and say ‘I am here for you.’

Nor can it partner you in a tango. Just saying.

I have baked a honey cake and drizzled it, put a wash on, changed a bed, dressed, applied slap, made a cauliflower cheese for supper, wished a grand-daughter happy unicorn birthday, swept the kitchen floor, prepared a salad, ate breakfast, fed the birds and the dog, danced to Ronan Keating’s new single and it is now 7 am. There is something manic about me, I am beginning to believe. Residue automatic morning-ness from when the tourist business was up and running, endless children, many of whom I didn’t know, also up and running, and food food food required by hundreds kept me cartwheeling from first light. Half the time there was little point washing up as meal demands bunched together like giggling girls on an outing. I whisked, beat, baked, stewed, roasted and steamed mountains of produce. It thinks me I am unable to step out of those running shoes, even now, when days are slow and gentle, mostly, with the exception of the odd crappy day wherein I cannot run for the life of me. My legs are leaden and my mind is a roundabout on speed. However, I am happy to report that such days are rare, not least because I can’t be bothered with any sort of sickness, mental or physical, disallowing either much space in the room. Be off with you, I say, but don’t go bothering anyone else because you are just not welcome. Try outer space.

Mornings bounce me like Tigger. I wake with the birds and absolutely cannot turn over for more sleep. Despite my passionate love for my recycled plastic bottle filled duvet and my feathery down pillows, I have too much energy fizzing through my veins to lie a minute longer. I have to be quiet, though. Himself won’t rise till about 8 and my kitchen is a floorboard below his bedroom. I don’t think they lagged things much in the 1870’s. I tiptoe through my tasks, interested, excited, curious and particularly curious when I discover that the washing pile is gone. Who has gone-d it? There is only me who washes in this house. I discover it a little later through a downstairs window, bobbing like bunting on the line. I have no recollection of hanging it there. Perhaps I didn’t. Perhaps the Night Fairies did it for me. How sweet they are. I remember them from my young harassed mother-days. They always surprised me with their kindnesses but there were times when I would rather they told me what they’d done because I might then have avoided wasting precious time in search of something I knew I had left just there the night before. Just there stares back at me emptily. I began to suspect collusion with the Night Fairies. Once, when I was certain of a pile of bed sheets awaiting a spin in the belly of my washing machine, I found them half way up the stairs, draped into an Aladdin’s cave and with two guilty looking collies curled up inside, each one enjoying a bowl of muesli.

Perhaps when life has been a circus for long enough, the circus becomes the life and each performer becomes the circus. I think I have. And I don’t mind one bit. I think the circus training has kept me bouncing through all sorts of horrible, kept me mostly up and taught me that nothing in life is going to get me down for long. I just wish I could share this with everyone else. Life is such a precious gift, and always too short. Living it right up to its end is the only path to happiness.

After all, stumble stones can always be turned into building blocks.