Curse you Gin & Tonic

Picture the scene......

A barn miles from no where.

10pm on a cool summer Saturday evening in August.

50 middle aged men standing a large circle holding hands together in the dim light. All the men are a little nervous about what is about to occur, but they are also a little excited, some men very excited for good reasons, some for the wrong reasons.

What happened next was unpleasant and messy. In the dim light of the barn the men started to dance, some men danced badly, some very badly.
I was taking part in a barndance in Tixall. A surprise to me I can tell you. But at 35 years of age you need to take a chance or two!

The evening started at 7.45pm, leaving the babysitter at home with the kids and crossing my fingers so they would sleep through. Which they did and always do. 10 minutes later we had arrived at the farm in Tixall, parked the car in a field and taken the short walk to the barn. It was a clear and warm summers evening, which there haven't been too many off this year. the views of the Staffordshire countryside were fantastic and it reaffirmed my opinion that the UK is a lovely and beautiful place, although when it rains that is hard to see sometimes.

A further 10 minutes later and we had found our table and been introduced to everyone. I can't remember any of their names, but this is OK, everyone was very friendly, very different to us and all had the same sober reservations about dancing in a barn in the middle of nowhere. There reservations took a little time and lots of alcohol to subside, but once they did we all had a great time. I think that over the course of the evening I danced at least 4 or 5 dances. In the early dances I very quickly became competitive (as did Christof) and a little annoyed that some of our more mature dancing group were unable to remember the moves. This inability to remember the moves I put down to age and alcohol. Both of which caught up with me (and Christof) a little later in the evening.

After a few square dances, the odd 'dosey doh' and a strange dance of musical 'grab a ladie' nobody wanted the evening to end. Unfortunately by this time it was after 11pm and a lot of wine had been consumed and some of our more mature dancing partners were happy to tidy up, wash their glasses and then leave in an orderly manner and let the designated driver take them home. Unfortunately Christof and I still had a bottle of gin and tonic left, so we were going nowhere. Well not for an hour at least. We spent the rest of the evening in good company with a great couple of people. Now names are my strong point, so we won't worry ourselves too much about these.

At around twenty past midnight we made our way out of the barn and down the long road home. We had a quick stop off on the way to look at some stables which belonged to one of our drinking partners. Not sure why we looked at them, but they were very nice non the less. Due to our large intake of alcohol we were walking back the 2 miles to home. It was a lovely evening, quite warm, the sky was pretty clear and no one else around apart from us. Those 2 miles took around an hour to walk, which even at a cautious inebriated pace is slow. None the less we made in back in one piece (apart from Christof's hic-ups), paid the baybsitter, locked up the house and went to bed.

Not too many hours later the kids emerged into our room fully dressed and ready for tennis club. Whilst we of course support physical activity for the kids neither of us were in the mood. Although I'm sure the parents of Venus and Serena never went to a drunken barndance. Christof took A&P to tennis whilst I lounged around and woke up slowly with number 3 child. the rest of the day was taken at a slow pace, but even though the hangover was grim and I swore off alcohol forever, I enjoyed the barndance evening so much it helped to make things feel a little better.

I think we are on the look out for the next barndance, but I still have my concern that the next one we turn up at will involve less dancing and more throwing your car keys in a bowl.............