A time to dance and a time to put your feet up!

This story has been inspired by proper face to face conversations this week about the ending of lockdown and some writing I started at our latest writing group zoom meeting.

Tamsin had spent the latest lockdown learning a new unusual word every day. She had been determined not to waste any more time after spending lockdowns 6 and 7 moping over Craig, the love of her life, who had left her in the middle of lockdown 5 for his Pilates teacher, Daniel “The Downward Dog”. I am certain she would have been happier if the blonde-haired god was actually a goddess called Danielle.

Anyway, here we were enjoying our first night out for ages and she was explaining her word of the day for uncontrollable dancing.

“Tarantism!”

“Dancing like a spider on roller skates?” I retorted; I like to think I was the comical friend but all too frequently am left laughing loudest at my own jokes.

“Don’t be so daft – that’s tarantula.” Tamsin said with a straight face. I really need to find friends who think I’m funny.

Perhaps it’s just been too long since we’ve been in each other’s space, face to face without a screen. Had we lost the art of reading facial expressions? Had we spent too long focusing on our own faces staring back at us, checking our extra-long hair wasn’t too much out of place, worrying about the spot erupting on our forehead and not really paying attention to the people we were talking to.

The club was loud and the air stifling, a breeding ground for bacteria but since we’d all had the cocktail of prescribed inoculations, and were entitled to two free shots at the bar each we should survive this latest round of social interaction.

I managed to keep moving my feet to the rhythm but looking at us all there was very little of the uncontrolled “tarantism” going on, each of us appeared to sway in unison, our dancing resembling Zumba moves we’d learned online, ingrained muscle memory movement, single, single, double, grapevine.

Was it six of seven years now that we had spent living in and out of lockdown? A night out like this was such a novelty I was determined to enjoy it but I was also exhausted, looking round I wasn’t the only one. Age was not on our side anymore, the eighties soundtrack was still appealing, by far the best decade for music in living memory. We were the lucky ones who could remember the nightclubs of our youth but a night in with Netflix and a mug of cocoa was rather appealing.

The seventeenth series of Bridgeton started tomorrow; would I have enough energy to binge watch it? People complained the scripts were flimsier than the sets but it was still compelling viewing, even if due to social distancing laws the main characters were now played by holograms, at least the A.I. robots of season 14 were a dim memory – a dream sequence thought up by the evil genius Duke Binary that was best forgotten. We had all got quite good at wiping out the low spots, a useful survival technique.

Tamsin tugged at my arm, the shock of physical touch made me recoil and she looked apologetic, “I think I’ve just spotted Craig, can we go?”

Over the noise I nodded my consent and gave her a warm smile hoping to communicate compassion rather that pure joy at finding an escape route. With quarantine and other restrictions, it would be months before we were allowed back, the one night out every ninety days rule once seemed draconian but eighty-nine nights of bliss lay ahead of me.