Work Hard, Dance Harder

Wow. There can be no doubt that my wife is an amazing writer. That last entry was sheer poetry. I don't have anthing to match that - just an account of my recent activities. Informative, surely. Uplifting . . . not so much.

Last Saturday I served at an AYS job in Essex, about half an hour outside of central London. It was a surprise birthday party at a private home, with drinks and canapes sereved in a tent in the backyard. I've done several tent jobs, but this one was unique, and the interior was decked out to resemble a tale from Arabian Nights - deep-coloured fabric hangings, silks, curtains, plush pillows for sitting and low wooden end-tables, all in a very Middle-Eastern flavour. I did not have a camera on me, but I hope to get some pics from a fellow server who had a camera in their phone. I was dressed in an eggplant-purple nehru jacket and served plenty of Pimms. If you haven't encountered Pimms (I never had before I came here), it's a light summery cordial that's mixed with lemonade (the British "lemonade", which is like a slightly bitter Sprite) and a selection of chopped fruit - in this case strawberry, lemon, cucumber and mint. It's delicious and refreshing, but it's also a bit insidious, because it's so light-tasting you don't realize how drunk it makes you until you're falling over!

Greenwich is just southeast of the centre of London, and is home to the observatory that measures the precise time on Earth from the Prime Meridian. I've never taken the time to really look around the area, but I have served at jobs in Greenwich several times and sailed past it on the Thames on three separate occasions. Sunday night was a dinner job at the Queen's House, an historic house/museum just down the hill from the observatory, and it served to remind me that I need to take some personal time in this lovley little district.

Back in Toronto, our circle of singer/dancer/actor/waiter friends knew all the scuttlebutt about different studios which offered open classes in various styles of dance, so as to keep the instrument tuned, as it were. Here in London the biggest and best studio is called Pineapple, and it offers a multitude of styles of dance classes - from the standard jazz/ballet/tap, to hip-hop, Egyptian, ballroom, and . . . Michael Jackson style, which is the class I tried out last night. I found it advertised on the studio website, as well as an article in a local paper praising it as a fun time on the dance floor, so I slipped on my rhinestone glove and moonwalked down to Covent Garden to see what it was all about. The teacher was a move-for-move carbon copy of Jacko's style, and he did his best to impart the subtleties of the steps to the class, with Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough blaring in the background. The secret of Jackson's style really is in the isolation, so that you move exactly one body part (as specific as left pectoral muscle) while the rest of you stays still. All in all it was a fun time, but my emulation of the King of Pop left a great deal to be desired in my eyes. I thought to myself as I looked at my reflection in the studio mirror, "I didn't think it was possible to find anyone "whiter" than Michael, but I'm looking at him right now!"