Lockdown Laughter,

Lock-down Laughter,

I mentioned yesterday that my husband Steve had found a new class for me that he thought would be most suitable. This was the New York Ballet Workout. Yesterday all we did was to turn in on for a moment or two to see if it looked even vaguely possible for non professional to even attempt. So he cue-ed it up and I followed just part one of it, as I said on Tuesday. It should be said that I have danced as a child and a teenager so I have taken part in many a ballet class when I was young. That was a very long time ago and gap of sixty years.

Steve has never had a dance class in his life. He does love ballet though. His introduction to the art was that when he first started his own transport business a while after he had left school, he got a job moving a touring group from the London Festival Ballet for a few performances in Europe. His job was the transport the scenery from theatre to theatre. He also helped assembling and moving the scenery. He doesn’t actually remember much about the transport side of the journey because although he had never been to a ballet in his life before hand, he was totally knocked out by the dancing, the skill, the power, the beauty, the music. He became a lifetime devotee in the space of a few hours, over a few days. He and I have been to the ballet whenever we could manage it and of course watched ballet on TV. 

Still I was surprised this morning have the TV station all set up when Steve called me in to attempt the class, he was dressed in a pair of Lycra running shorts, a vest and bare feet. Part one started with two professional dancers dressed similarly. There was a voice over instruction and prepared music. Steve took the whole thing very seriously with absolutely no bloke type mucking about, at all. He tried hard to imitate the dancers and listen to the instruction noticeably trying to pull his head and neck as if suspended like a puppet, pull his shoulders back, hold his tummy in. I was really impressed that he took it all very seriously. The start of it was following the basic moves. Spoken by the ballet master doing the voice over. It was a bold attempt by Steve and I thought he did extremely well. The class went on through twelve or so parts and did naturally progress in difficulty. But we both enjoyed it very much and though it was mainly a warm up, before floor stretching exercises and then later into some more testing steps with balance issues. We were both perspiring by the time I called a halt saying that I thought it was enough for my sweet absolute beginner husband, since it would perhaps be folly to over do something totally alien to any other exercise he had done before.

A little while after that, our neighbour Helen, directly over the road was cleaning their quite large driveway and I opened to window to shout hello. She came over the road as far as the wall at the end of our small front garden, and there we all chattered for a while about this and that, until she asked what we were doing this morning. She laughed in a good humoured fashion when I told her about the ballet. Steve was there too eating a mid morning snack. In the course of a friendly chatter, I told her that as a child my dancing teacher had repeatedly said that if we students did our Plié s and our arm movements every day that we would still be able to do them when we were 80 and I am proof of that. I went on to say that another teacher and a modern dance school in Worthing, where I took tap and acrobatic classes, said the same about doing the splits but sadly I had let that one go. But, I have been trying to reinstate it into my daily routine but I am still a good way off, slightly closer with my left leg forward.

Helen is my hair dresser normally and that is obvious if you see her because her hair always looks wonderful and indeed this morning just sweeping and cleaning the drive she had it pinned up in a positively film star style beautifully twisted and arranged. The post lady came along and broke up the conversation after a while and we all moved to get on with the next job.  Later on after taking a bath I tried very hard to do something similar to my hair. I waltzed in the show Steve that I had tried to do my hair like Helen’s. He looked sternly at me and said “Its not quite like Helen’s darling”. 

Then we had a major Whoopsie in the house: Our little cat Birdy who has also been forced to become and indoor cat, after being a stray for the first months of her life until she moved in with us. Has not taken kindly to the Lockdown and has been very vocal with her objections.

Still I have to say the she took to the litter box we bought immediately when we stopped her going out at all. This was done in the light of our immediate next door neighbour coughing badly, poor woman. We did not want Birdy wandering in there and then coming back in to us.

Cutting a long story short. She is most thorough about the covering over of her very private passing's. She scrapes and digs in circles trying the scrape in the wall, the carpet and the side on the little box. It seems that she had carried on scraping after we passed by and must have thrown out the little physical item that daintily resembles several linked black olives, nothing offensive looking at all usually and easy to remove (MY JOB). However when I passed back that way I spotted the load on the floor and unlike any other occasion it looked squashed. I got some loo paper and picked it up and put it in the toilet. But then I noticed that there were marks on the carpet through the hall and up the stairs, Oh no!

I followed the trail of diminishing little browny-black marks. They went as far as Steve! I took his shoes and turned them over and sure enough he had trodden in it before I found the offending item and walked it through the hall and right up the stairs to his office. He had not seen it when he had come in from the back garden, and stepped right in it. The whole drama having obviously just happened due to the young ladies over active cleaning processes.

Steve spent the rest of the morning working with the carpet cleaner. And we can only laugh about it since it the one and only accident our dainty little cat has had. She is forgiven and since this is my Daf’s Diary I have included it because it was an occurrence in my day and so like Running and Turbo Training and Poetry and the like, should be recorded. Thank you all for allowing me the share this item of interest with you.