Hope you’ve had a good weekend? I’ve just returned from a fun weekend in Edinburgh! My SO and I had some loyalty points to use on travel, so we used them to book a hotel and then bought our train tickets on top. Neither of us had ever been to Scotland before (apart from my coach trip to Stranraer to catch the ferry to Northern Ireland back in 1997 but that doesn’t really count), and a few of my colleagues had been for conferences recently and were raving about it, so we jumped at the chance to visit the compact Scottish capital…on Burns Night! It was just over a 4 hour train journey there, where we stayed in a spa hotel near the Usher Hall. We went for a morning swim in the spa, ate haggis with our breakfast and visited the amazing Edinburgh Castle, which looms over the city. We also saw the Scottish crown jewels and tasted whisky liqueur. LOVE IT! We will definitely go back.
Having attended the first two weeks of the Pilates Mat Work to Music course, I actually skipped last Monday’s class. Monday is usually my day of buying my salad items etc for lunch for the rest of the week, and since starting Pilates, I’m finding my weekly routine a bit off, and I’m chasing my tail to fit everything into a couple of days, plus trying to make up the time at work when taking two longer lunchtimes in four days. TB is an amazing, if not slightly intimidating teacher (!) and the postural work is really helping my achy left knee, but I feel over-committed. So…I’m withdrawing from that course and instead I’m going to try either going to the gym, pay as you go, for 20 mins to half an hour on a Tuesday, or just doing some strengthening stuff at home.
By Thursday last week I felt extremely tired, like I’d been punched in the eyes, but I knew I’d wake up once I got dancing. It’s so tempting to just not go to a class when you feel like that. We worked on the Shirley Temple exercise again, but in pairs where we keep turning 90 degrees. Very confusing, but it was fun to try and actually work out together when we should be facing each other, when we should be passing each other and when our backs should be facing! We also worked again on a heel toe step exercise which travelled across the studio, and we were given the option to try it swung (yes), slower or even faster (er no). Our teacher was showing me the faster version when we were going across the room to music, but I really need to work out the faster rhythm before trying to fit it into the music – I’ve since done this at home!
Our Naughty Little Flea routine practice was good and I’d made an effort to learn and remember all the steps that we’d learned so far, but the next part is quite difficult in that it goes off the beat and changes timing a LOT. I am going to try and go over the steps to first of all learn and remember them. THEN I will try altering the timing by listening to the track and trying it out. Rhythm tap is very taxing!
I can’t believe the year is almost over! As Christmas day is almost upon us, I thought I’d share my highlights of 2018:
Here’s a run-down of my week in a series of bullet points:
Lately I’ve been pondering the question of when you are allowed to call yourself a dancer. I keep saying to people that I take dance classes, or I’m learning to tap dance, but hesitate to say I’m a ‘dancer’ probably because in the past people told me I had missed the boat, I was too old etc when I said I wanted to dance and do choreography, plus I don’t perform, I never took any grades in anything, and so on. Yet when I think about it, I’ve actually been dancing for over 15 years.
