Let’s not dance

Why will people simply not believe you when you tell them that you don’t want to dance? Their reactions mimic the classic pattern of grief: first confusion, then denial, then anger. They tug at your arm like they’re trying to pull it from the socket. ‘Come on, you have to dance!’ ‘No I don’t.’ ‘Oh come on! You want to really.’ ‘No I don’t.’ ‘Yes you do! Of course you do! Everybody likes dancing!’

It’s at this stage that I sometimes get all dark on them, losing the smile, injecting a note of firmness or perhaps even menace, and pointing out that if I wanted to dance I would be dancing, but as I’m not dancing they can safely infer that I don’t want to dance. None of which reflects well on me, I know, seeing as it’s someone’s 50th in a village hall. But balls to them. They started it.

People always make the same accusations. ‘You’re boring!’ Well no, if I was boring I wouldn’t be here in the first place, would I? I’m sitting having a drink, a laugh, an enjoyable conversation with Emma about that new series on BBC4 — and you want me to interrupt it all for ‘We Built This City’ by Starship? Who’s the boring one here?

Next up is: ‘You don’t like music!’ Wrong again. I love music. It’s just that I feel no need to dance to it. Recently I was sitting on my own at a bash, delighted that the DJ had chosen ‘Walk This Way’ by Aerosmith. Only a few days before I’d been playing along to it on guitar at home, and was happily rerunning the experience in my head. That and concentrating on the drum riff — my son got a kit for Christmas (I bought myself a kit for Christmas), and trying to decipher the timing of hi-hat, snare and bass drum was great fun.