Wednesday 9 February 2011

One Dancer

It was a long piece for one dancer despite his many trophies and accolades. The second time to be at Sadlers Wells in one week. The ballet was better. This was Flamenco, but I would have preferred a woman in a dress snapping away. This man was tap dancing. There was lovely Spanish acoustic guitar and a wailing singer singing away most likely about romance as they are Spaniards and that is what they do. He was very talented, but Ben was squirming and I was sitting there feeling like a fucking martyr for not having a proper date. Listening to romantic music with your six year old son is somehow not a party. Though, my boy is getting  a lot of culture.

We met a woman on the bus on the way there with a child. She asked intuitively if we were also going to the flamenco. Yes. The local ticket scheme. She had moved out of Holborn to Chinatown and said it was a breath of fresh air. Yes. She knew about the "Holborn Mafia" as they are called. I am on pleasant tea drinking terms with them. I turn a blind eye at their bling.

We walked home passed the square where we had once chatted with a man who had a nice dog and cool shoes. People hated him as his dog shat everywhere. He didn't seem maladjusted at all. He hated them as he picked up his dog's shit and they never noticed. And, they never used the square themselves, so why should they care if his dog shat or not? And the teens in the pagoda with their broken beer bottles did  a lot more damage.

We chatted with an American woman and her child. She recognised us from Tae kwon do. She also thought the show had been a bit samey. She talked about the elf game. You need a match and some small trees. Find the elves in the shadows. We parted at Merlin street. And then the  Easton with its deep green tiles where someone familiar sat dining with a girl in a beret. It looked a pleasant scene.

It was an accidental moment. It wasn't their usual hour or their usual route. She didn't mean to be there obscured by the condensation watching him with someone else. She pulled a tiny violin from her pocket, but all the strings had gone. The sheet music was too hard to read in the dark. She was out of practice and out of tunes. Reason pulled her away from the window. Her son was hungry. "Ask them if they have chips and ketchup." Reason walked them home.

She was a nice girl. "I could wear a beret too. I just need a beret."  She buried her last attempt at reason. Her son was hungry. He had made his own Margerita on a field trip at school.. He had demanded skittles during the intermission. "It's not a dinner," she quipped. Cold pizza was waiting. She got a few beers from Montana Wines and watched herself drink them in the kitchen while she chatted with her friend in Indiana. 

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