Fringe Frolics

It’s New Zealand Fringe Festival time again, and for the third year I’ve volunteered to help out. Nicola is no longer volunteering as she is now an active participant, with her band.

This year, I have been rostered exclusively at Hannah Playhouse, one of the larger venues for the Fringe, and therefore inclined to have events that will attract a bigger audience; so not so much the weird, quirky shows that are the essence of the festival. Next year I’ll ask if I can get a mix of venues so that I can see some of the odder offerings.

The first show I saw was Nicola’s band, Sven Olsen’s Brutal Canadian Love Saga, or The Svens as they are more commonly called. They were again playing at Newtown Community Centre. I say “Nicola’s band” but she is a viola player in the string section, so perhaps she’s not the actual leader of the pack. They played their usual selection of songs about life in Wellington and New Zealand, with backdrops that are an integral part of the show. 

My first gig at Hannah Playhouse was Antonio!, billed as “a queer punk pirate musical starring Shakespeare’s ultimate love interest”, a reference to the fact that Shakespeare has a character of this name in four plays. This is a romp through those works, with the conceit that they are in fact the same person, and Shakespeare was in love with him.

The following week was a sell-out performance of The Spinoff: The Fold Live, New Zealand’s biggest (only?) media podcast, broadcast live from the theatre with two guests, also from NZ media. How interested am I in the behind-the-scenes goings-on in New Zealand’s media world? Not very. I was allocated the mezzanine and balcony section for this show, which is normally closed as not needed, but apparently enough people are interested in this subject to use it. The crowd for this show was noticeably more mature than is usual for Fringe gigs.

Nicola came along to my third gig, Tecuani, as she had a previous engagement at Te Papa. This show was a Mexican dance show revolving around colonialism, human sacrifice, gods, ghosts, and other shit like that. 

The following night we went to see a show that we’d actually bought tickets for – The Fabulous Fabelinskys, at Te Auaha. This is a combination of circus and play, with the story centred on a family of three women who’ve just lost the patriarch and main performer of their circus act. It follows their trials, particularly at the hands of the nefarious circus-owner who exploits them; interspersed with demonstrations of their acts – hoops and harness, high ropes, and a clown, with a sword-swallowing finale. Does what it says on the tin, and probably the best thing that I’ve seen this festival. 

My final show was Hausdown, which is a Bridgerton-esque house party at a country estate. There are various shenanigans between the guest before they finally all come out and admit that the boys are in love with the boys, and the girls are in love with the girls. Enthusiastically performed, the actors camp it up in period costumes and generally have fun.

 

Belle: A Performance Of Air

This is a show which originally premiered in 2022, to an audience of 30 people, when New Zealand was in lockdown due to the omicron variant of Covid-19. It’s only now getting a release in a larger venue – St James Theatre. It’s part of the Aotearoa New Zealand Festival of the Arts. We got tickets and went along.

It was an early 7:00pm start, so we decided to go for dinner at old favourite Mr. Go’s. As usual we had their Korean chicken wings, typhoon prawns and some pork dumplings. Excellent as ever.

St James Theatre is but a skip and a jump away across Taranaki Street and we were there well in time for the start. I activated the tickets on my Ticketbastard app, and…for the second time in two goes, they failed to scan. Ticketbastard have implemented this new technology where there are moving lines on the QR code, presumably to prevent fraud. It’s all very well installing this new technology, but it’s no use if the bloody thing doesn’t work! Anyway, the usher said “I’m sure it’s fine” and waved us in anyway, which is kinda what you’re not supposed to do.

We were near the front at the end of a row so didn’t have a full-on view of the stage. It did, unfortunately, mean we were right on the angle of some of the lighting effects, which somewhat blinded us. The premise of the show is that it fuses music, light, and dance with aerial acrobatics, using hoops, silk, ropes etc. There wasn’t as much of the aerial manoeuvres as I thought there would be, and it took about 15 minutes to even get going, really...which for a one-hour show is quite a lot. The accompanying music, some of it live, either vocal or violin, was very moody, occasionally straying into electronica. The lighting effects and hazing machine were such that what you saw was mostly shadows and silhouettes, with very few instances of the subjects being well lit. Whilst I’m sure this was intentional, it did mean that you couldn’t really see what was going on, for the most part. It felt to me that they had around half an hour’s worth of material, and they’d padded it out to one hour.

I think this one gets filed under “interesting”, and also under “don’t bother with again”.

Shen Yun

The weather in Wellington hasn’t been great over the last few days. Yesterday it rained and rained, the day before and today it’s drizzling non-stop, and the 10-day forecast does not contain a “sun” symbol. Autumn is definitely here, and with it comes more indoor-based entertainment options.

We went to see Shen Yun at the St James Theatre. We started off with dinner at Zibibbo – a last-gasp usage of the 2013/14 entertainment book, as we await delivery of the new one for the coming year. Zibibbo specialise in modern European-oriented food – last year we went there for their inaugural dégustation menu during Wellington On A Plate, and very good it was too.

The dancing is billed as Classical Chinese, folk and ethnic dances. Many of the dances tell a story - which was explained to us by the somewhat cheesy MC before each number (and, presumably, slightly less cheesily in Chinese by the lady MC). There were also performances from two Chinese opera singers, a soprano and a tenor. The dances make use of a lot of flowing silk and ribbons as well as swirly costumes, all very brightly coloured. Interspersed with the "classical" pieces were more modern dances, which thumped home the point that was somehow omitted from any of their promotional literature, which is that all the dancers and the dance company are all followers of Falun Gong, and persecuted in China.

In the interval, we were approached by a slightly creepy Jehovah's Witness-style representative who asked us if we wanted to be "interviewed" about tonight's show. We both politely declined.

Medal Test

Originally we thought we wouldn’t be able to take a medal test this time round, because they were scheduled for the weekend we’d already booked to go out to Martinborough. Astute followers of this blog, however, will realise that this was also the weekend when a series of severe earthquakes hit the Central New Zealand region, and the medal tests were postponed as the building needed to be inspected for damage.

The medal tests and social dance were rescheduled for this weekend, so we were able to book a place. As I hadn’t taken a medal last time, we are now out of synch on what we’re doing…maybe at a future date I’ll try and get two done so I can catch up. I was doing my Bronze Bar Latin, and Nicola her Bronze Ballroom. As always seems to happen, I didn’t think I did my best dancing for the test, but when the marks came out it appeared that the judges must have been looking away at the time that I mis-stepped.

In the evening we met up with another couple for a dinner at Osterio Del Toro before the dance, before going and strutting our stuff at the Whitirea Performance centre. Amongst the delights on offer this time was a our instructor teaching us how to do a Zorba the Greek-style dance, which ended in mayhem. It was also one of our party’s birthday, so we toasted him with Deutz bubbles.

At the end of the evening the certificates, medals and judges’ comments are awarded – applause all round.  I was quite pleased with my scores and comments – as usual I am my own harshest critic as I know when I’ve gone wrong, even if the judges didn’t spot it. Anyway, onwards and upwards – next time round I’ll be doing ballroom.

My medal collection so far

Gangnam Style

That time of year has  come around again - the annual "Pimp Your Pod" competition. Last year we took the prize with our famous Beery Christmas beer tree. Since then, our team has divided - Nelish is now leading the Portfolio Reporting team, whilst I work for Brent in the Portfolio Analytics team. So this year, we decided to pimp our pod...

Gangnam style!

We obtained some pictures of Psy from the internet (you may have heard of it) and decorated our pod accordingly:

We faced stiff competition from the Risk Information team, who had put together a decoration based on the transition of National Bank into ANZ, which has been a big thing here in New Zealand over the past two years. For those of you who don't know, ANZ bought the National Bank from Lloyds in 2003. They have now decided to merge the two banks under one brand, the ANZ brand. This has caused wailing and gnashing of teeth, mostly by a media-induced hype of "foreign ownership" which conveniently ignores the fact that (a) all the other big New Zealand banks are owned by Australian banks, (b) that National Bank was bought 9 years ago, and (c) Lloyds Bank, the previous owner, was also a foreign bank. Hey ho.

Some other teams also put up their decorations, including the Snoopy Christmas, and the Beach Bach Party;

All the rest went with a basic "Christmas" theme which we felt was a bit boring.

We also did the Gangnam Style dance to the song, to impress the judges, dressing (as close as we could) to Psy's Gangnam Style - this involved white shirts, bow ties, and black trousers. I'm not sure if this improved or worsened our score...particularly as Brent didn't seem to know the moves, and Shane only learnt them at lunchtime. Fortunately Cliff and myself were at the front, so hopefully covered up their bad dancing.

The judges went off into a huddle, and then came out with the result of their deliberations: we came second, winning $50, and the Risk Information team came first, winning $100.

On Thursday, we will have a "final of finals" between all the winners on all floors in Risk with the Chief Risk Officer as the final adjudicator. There is an as-yet unspecified prize for this also, so we may yet win...if our team members can improve their dancing skills!

Shake, Rattle And Roll

On Saturday we took our first "proper" ballroom dancing medal. The medals that we've taken so far have all been in the "social" category - for bronze, you do two dances, for silver, three, and for gold, four. However, the standard of dancing does not need to be very high to gain a pass - in fact it's rumoured that you get a score of 90 just for showing up for the first one! The Ballroom class includes waltz, foxtrot, quickstep and tango. For the bronze level, we do waltz and foxtrot, as we've been doing these dances almost from the beginning, and we're now trying to improve our technique rather than learn the steps to these dances. The tests were running late when we got there (as always seems to be the case - an instance of Hofstader's law in action?) and we were just able to get in before they decided to take lunch.

In the evening we went to the social dance, which is usually arranged for the same day as the medal tests so that badges and certificates can be presented in the evening. We'd arranged with a few of our contemporaries to meet up beforehand at a Chinese restaurant nearby, before proceeding to the dance in the Whitireia Performance Centre, our usual venue. It was while we were dining here that the earth moved - quite a significant rumble (magnitude 5.7, we found out later, and the most severe earthquake in the region since 1966). We joked about it, as you do, and then finished our dinner.

At the dance we were presented with our bronze medals and certificates, together with the examiners' comments. I guess the time has now come to start paying some proper attention to these in order to improve our dancing style. Still scoring in the Highly Commended category, but at the bottom end of the score range these days instead of the top. I definitely need to work on some aspects of my dance before I attempt another medal. We are, however, increasingly confident at the social dances and can tackle most of the dances that are available. We are planning to take our dancing out "into the wild" again in the new year.

On Thursday morning of the following week, we were once again visited by the earthquake gods - this time with a relatively minor 4.2, which I missed because I was at street level. When I got back to the office I found out about it - but then, you always feel them more when you're on the 7th floor.

Medieval Merriment

We were invited to Jim’s 50^th birthday party, held at the Wellington Irish society just off Cambridge Terrace.  Jim is a keen collector of all things medieval, so the party was themed and fancy dress required. We set off to the Costume Cave on Thursday evening before dancing to select our costumes, and with the assistance of the helpful staff, soon came away with a good selection including accessories:

After work on Friday, we headed straight home to change, then got in a cab back into town. Unfortunately we’d both forgotten to go to the cash machine before going out, so we had to ask the driver to take us into Courtenay Place to get some money out, and then walk from there to the venue, attracting some comments along the way – although most of the denizens of Courtenay Place seemed to take it in their stride, and assumed that we were just a sharp-dressed couple!

We arrived to find the entertainment had already started. The Wellington Medieval Guild had been invited to provide jugglers, musicians, singers and dancers, and they proceeded to juggle, make music, sing and dance. After dinner various friends and family members made some speeches, then the dancers attempted to instruct us in the art of medieval dancing. We just about got the hang of it.

Medieval lady with mobile phone

Gold

Always believe in your soul

You have the power to know

You’re indestructible

Always believe in

On Saturday morning we drove into town to take our Gold medal test. Unfortunately we’d made a bit of a mix-up with the times, and were an hour later than we thought we should be. This in  itself wasn’t a major stumbling-block as they’re fairly flexible about timing, but it meant that almost as soon as we arrived we were thrust into the test with very little practice or warm-up beforehand. That said, we know the routines pretty well by now, but I was somewhat disappointed with my performance and didn’t think that I’d given it my best shot.

Afterwards we went for a coffee with another couple, then after a spot of shopping, parked up and went to lunch at Le Métropolitain, a French (never! ;-)) café on Cuba Street. This was a final foray into Wellington On A Plate, and the first time that we’d gone for the burger option – one of the competitions run during the WOAP fortnight is the Burger Wellington, whereby each participating venue creates a burger especially for the competition, and is voted on by members of the public. In terms of originality, the “Allo Allo! Burger” was nothing special – melted cheese, bacon and mushroom topping – but it was very well executed, served with hand-cut string fries, and generally pretty good. It was the first time we’d been to Le Métropolitain (we’d tried once before, but it was fully booked…we avoided that trap this time) and we liked it a lot, so I think we’ll head back there sometime and sample the rest of their menu.

As is usually the case when we do our medal tests, there was a social dance in the evening. We packed our dancing shoes, caught a cab into town, and turned up at around 8pm. Some of our usual gang weren’t able to make it that night, but there were enough people there that we knew, and we are now confident enough to take to the floor for nearly all the dances, apart from the advanced ones that we’ve not started yet, like the tango. However, we have been promised a start on the quick-step next term, so that should add to our repertoire.

We had our medal ceremony, but unfortunately our medals hadn’t arrived - just the certificates and the examiner's marks and comments - so no pic of the shiny gold one that we have both attained.

100 Not Out

Yes, amazing as it may seem, this is my 100^th blog!

On Saturday we drove out to a school hall in Lower Hutt for Nicola to take her silver medal social dance, as she’d been unable to take it earlier when the rest of the class did, due to a Wellington City Chorus singing commitment. There were only a handful of us there, taking various different levels of medals (we only recognised one other person from our class) – most of them at a more advanced standard than we’re at!

Nicola was ably led by our dance instructor, Michael, and rock’n’rolled, cha-cha-cha’d and waltzed around the floor. She’ll get the results and commentary when we go to our usual Thursday class later this week.

Afterwards we had a quick lunch at a restaurant in Lower Hutt, then headed back to Wellington to view some properties to rent in the afternoon. On Sunday we also went out, driving to Hataitai, Island Bay and Northland to look at three more houses. We were somewhat disappointed by the standard of the houses offered for rent, and have decided to look a bit more upmarket than we have been so far. The ones we’ve seen don’t appear to have been particularly well looked after – one in particular, where the owner proudly boasted that he’d lived there for 40 years. “And hasn’t seen fit to redecorate it in all that time” I said to myself, as we were put off by the mauve bath and avocado sink combination, both in a poor state of repair. It was unfortunate, as with a bit of modernisation these houses could be very desirable…but we’re not in the market for a “fixer-upper” at this stage. Anyway, we’ve identified some more to view that are better quality (we hope), and we’ll drive around to see those next weekend. All this is helping us get our bearings around Wellington and the suburbs, in particular the road systems where you have to plan which lane to be in two sets of lights from where you want to turn off!

We stopped off after viewing the Hataitai house and drove up to the summit of Mount Victoria – last time we went there we were on foot, and it was shortly after we’d arrived. It was a lovely sunny day so we took some more photos, and knew a bit more about what we were looking at this time.

Hataitai and Evans Bay

Song & Dance

Today is song and dance day. To start with, Nicola headed down to the Wellington West Plaza hotel for a breakfast, before crossing the road for rehearsals for this afternoon’s Sweet Adelines International Region 35 (that’s New Zealand to the rest of us) Annual Convention and Competition, which is taking place this weekend. The chorus competition is this afternoon – the quartets were held yesterday. The main focus of the competition, for the Wellington City Chorus, isn’t the position achieved (although winning would be nice, of course) but what marks they achieve, as this will affect whether they get an invite to the World Championships in Denver next year.

Meanwhile, I had a leisurely breakfast before wandering down to the dance studio in Vivian Street, to take my silver medal test. I met up with some of our gang from the intermediates class, and we all made our way through our routines with varying levels of self-perceived ability or otherwise. We’ll get the results tonight when we go to the social dance.

In the afternoon, I went along to see Nicola perform in the actual competition, and saw a couple of the other choirs that they were up against. In the end, the Wellington City Chorus came second with a score of 620, a result with which they were not best pleased. There will be a post-mortem on the result when she goes to practice tomorrow, so expect an update then.

We weren’t allowed to take any photos during the performance, so here’s one of Nicola in full war-paint:

In the evening we took a taxi down to the dance studio on Vivian Street for the Social Dance. There we met up with others from various other classes, some of whom we’d met before. The social dance was slightly less well-attended than previous ones we’ve been to, which helped in reducing the opportunities for bumping into fellow dancers…navigating around the dance-floor is one of the tricks that we haven’t really mastered yet! I received my silver medal, together with my scores and comment. As expected, the silver medal standard is higher than the bronze, so whilst I still got a “Highly commended”, my marks were down on the previous medal. As usual, there were helpful comments on my dancing, and a certificate.

The Boys Are Back In Town

This weekend, the NZI Rugby Sevens come to town. The tournament is played over Friday and Saturday at the Westpac Stadium. Today there was a parade of all the teams through the centre of Wellington, with their cheerleaders. I didn’t manage to see the whole parade in my lunch break, but from what I saw the Argentinians definitely had the best cheerleaders!

The England team went through on their float.

Tickets for the tournament sell out very quickly, and many people rely on getting them through corporate allocations. We were too late this year, but I think we’ll go and do it one year sometime in the near future. It’s traditional for Wellingtonians to wear fancy dress for the tournament, so we look forward to seeing those over Friday and Saturday – and possibly posted on here over the weekend. On Saturday night, Courtenay Place is closed to traffic and it turns into one giant party venue once the tournament is over.

New Terms

Dancing restarted a couple of weeks ago – this term we’re learning the rumba, samba, and improving our other dances – in particular (so far) our foxtrotting. And the quiz at the Backbencher started again on Tuesday – we started the season off with a creditable 2^nd place – would’ve won if we’d got the connection round right!

Social Dance

At a quarter to ten this morning we headed down to the Wellington Performing Arts Centre to take our first step on to the ladder of ballroom dancing certification: the Bronze medal 2 dance award, in the social branch. Due to a concatenation of circumstances that Nicola will explain herself, she was unable to do her medal dances, so it was left to me alone to carry the flag. My dancing partner, Shona, led me through the steps beforehand, gave me tips on my “rocking”, and generally put me at ease. I was nervous, but hoped that I acquitted myself well.

Foxtrotting - intense look of concentration!

In the evening, we went to the Masked Ball social dance. We’d been shopping in the afternoon for masks, and had come to the conclusion that masks just don’t work with glasses, so I went unmasked, whilst Nicola chose a peacock feather creation.

Ready to rumba

The format for the social dance is to include dancers of all levels, so there were some basic rock’n’roll numbers that we could do, as well as waltzes and foxtrots. We both felt far more able to participate in these than the last time that we went, when we’d only had four lessons. In the “snowball waltz” I felt confident to pick a partner and lead her around the dance floor, without crashing into other people too many times! Michael, our teacher and organiser of the dance, also led us in some new dances – some of which were beyond us – and also some party games, one of which we almost won! Coming second was as good as coming first, because there wasn’t actually a prize for winning other than the esteem of our fellow dancers.

In amongst the general dances were demonstrations by some of the more advanced dancers, who had been taking medals in levels that we can only dream about! This is what happens when you get into the higher echelons of dancing:

To quick for my camera!

We’ve been dancing now for two terms; within our class group there were only five of us who turned up for the social dance, which was a pity. Still, we will point out the benefits to the rest  of our class when we see them on Thursday, the last lesson in the current term, and we shall be having a “social” of our own afterwards, down the pub. Which pub? Why, the Backbencher, which is where we do our quiz nights! Clearly a popular choice amongst our class – which is not particularly surprising, as the venue where we dance is close to a lot of Government offices; there is a high representation of civil service types amongst our group.

At around 11 o’clock, the lights went up for the awards ceremony: those who had taken tests earlier in the day were awarded their medals, certificates, and also a commentary on their dancing. This is an important part of the process, as you are judged by a senior professional who provides advice and encouragement, pointing out what you’re doing well and what you need to improve on. A while ago, Michael had told us in fairly straightforward terms that he wouldn’t put a person forward to take a medal if there was any possibility of failure – so I was pretty well guaranteed a pass. The only question was what kind of pass would I get?

I can has certickifat!

The lowest medals were awarded first, so those of us from our dance group went up to get our medals and certificates. In our group, we all scored “Highly Commended” (the levels being “Pass”, “Commended”, “Highly Commended”, and “Highly Commended With Honours” – not often awarded to absolute beginners!) so were pretty chuffed with that. We then watched and applauded as everyone else was awarded their medals, and danced a final waltz before heading up the hill to home.

All in all, a great night out. We met some new people from further ahead in the programme, so we have an idea of what we should expect a year down the line as we continue learning. And we had fun! The more we do, the easier it gets, and we have exercises and practice to do before term starts again in January, with new dances to learn.

Voice Of The Beehive

On Sunday, the New Zealand Parliament had its annual open day. This allows the general public to go into areas of the parliamentary buildings that are normally closed to them.

We trotted down via Lambton Quay, and entered the parliamentary buildings via the Bowen House entrance, which is directly under Nicola’s office at No. 1 The Terrace. There were various exhibits about the history of Parliament, and of committee rooms which were not particularly noteworthy. One of the activities was to transcribe a ministerial speech via headphones, where my speed and agility on the keyboard were much admired by other members of the public and the (volunteer) staff. They said I could get a job there, but I think they were joking…!

We then went into the Beehive, as the newer part of the parliamentary building is popularly known:

Inside the Beehive we saw the banqueting hall, where a band was playing, so we took the opportunity to foxtrot and cha-cha-cha to the best of our ability.

The next stage of the tour took us through to Parliament House, which is a more traditionally-styled building. It contains the Debating Chamber and Legislative Council Chamber – the actual parliamentary parts of the building. Each MP is allocated a specific seat – a seating plan was provided – but sadly we weren’t allowed to sit in them. There was also a re-enactment of the opening ceremony of parliament, very much based on the Westminster model, with Black Rod banging his rod on the door three times and demanding entry. Naughty boy Chris Carter has to sit at the back of the class.

The final part of the tour is to the parliamentary Library, which is housed in the oldest part of the buildings. As we got to the end of the tour, there was a quiz on a computer, where I scored 94% (got one question out of 16 wrong), and was rewarded for my efforts with a NZ flag pin! I shall wear it proudly next time I’m in the vicinity of parliamentary folk.

Advanced Beginners

We started a new term tonight at Supreme Dance http://www.supremedance.co.nz/#top and are now considered “advanced beginners”! Woohoo! I think this means that we know the basic steps of the four dances – waltz, foxtrot, rock’n’roll, and cha-cha-cha, and are supposedly able to execute these. Well, it’s coming along, and now that the weather’s getting a bit better, we may actually be able to practice outside on the only part of our flat that is actually amenable to dancing, the patio. We aim to astonish and amaze our neighbours, and the occasional passer-by, with our dancing chops. Repeat after me: side-tap, side-tap, rock rock.

Blogging Again

Following on from my “blog about blogging”, I thought I’d ask you, my readers, about how you use this blog. The questions that spring immediately to mind are:

• Do you ever click on the weather icon on the right-hand side? Did you know that you can?
• When I post a link (like the one to http://www.supremedance.co.nz/#top up above), do you click on it to see what it’s about?

Please leave me some comments in the comments!

John, I'm Only Dancing

Tonight’s ballroom dancing concentrated on the cha-cha-cha, where we’d learned the basic move last week. This week we learned how to do a “New Yorker” which is the bit where you turn through 90˚ and step forward together. We also had another go at the waltz, and learned the technique of turning corners – very important when you’re on a dance floor and come to a wall!

On Saturday, we’ll be going to our first social dance, and will be able to talk to all the folk who so far have just been the unwitting recipients of my maladjusted steps. It’s also a chance to see how it should be done proper, like, as there will be demonstrations and other entertainments in the evening.

Dance Hall Daze

Third lesson time, and our usual instructor was not there, so his stand-in took the class. We started off with some rock’n’roll, which we’d done the week before, just to refresh our memories. Then we started on a new step, the waltz. Gah! We didn’t get enough practice before we were off into yet another new one, the cha-cha-cha. I think she tried to cram too much into a one-hour session…still, maybe some of it will sink in enough for next time. Meanwhile, the dance is only a week away.

We had planned to go and watch the rugby afterwards, but as it was still raining hard we gave that one a miss and headed home. Yup, we’re fair-weather rugby fans. As a consequence of their lack of support, the Lions lost 24-31 to Bay Of Plenty, and are now trying desperately to make the cut for the playoffs. They’ll need to win their last three games convincingly to do so…we’ll go along to their last home game, providing it’s not raining!

Ballroom Blitz

We went back to ballroom dancing lessons for the second week. I’d remembered what we’d learned the previous week, and managed not to stumble about too much. So then the instructor hit us with some additional steps so that we could advance our foxtrotting and rock’n’rolling skills. It’s all a bit complicated for a bear of very little brain, but I’m just about keeping up. We need to practice more between lessons, I think, as he’s going to add even more next week, I’m guessing. There’s a dance on 9^th October so I’m hoping that I’ll be just about competent in time for that!

Scrutiny

We went out for dinner last night to the Boulcott Streeet Bistro http://www.boulcottstreetbistro.co.nz/ for Nicola’s birthday. The food was great – we both had venison for main – and generally enjoyable. At the end of the meal, however, we found that they’d added a bottle of wine to our bill which we hadn’t had. This is the second time this has happened since I’ve been in Wellington, so we now scrutinize every restaurant bill carefully. Coincidence or incompetence? These are high-end restaurants, so I expect them to get it right first time.

Strictly Ballroom

A few weeks ago I signed up to a website called The Daily Do www.dailydo.co.nz who send you a daily email with a special offer in the city where you live. The deal with these offers is that they are usually only available on the day that you receive the email, or are limited in number, so you need to make an (almost) instant decision.

Last week, one of the offers was $10 for three weeks’ tuition of ballroom dancing. Well, obviously we went for it, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing this blog! We had our first lesson last night. The class had been running for two weeks already, so some folk knew what they were doing, although we weren’t the only first-timers there. The hall was almost full with people of all ages. I stumbled through a foxtrot, and almost, but not quite, got the hang of rock’n’roll.  

So next week we’ll be back, and hopefully some of what they’re teaching me will rub off, in time for the Social Dance in October.