The club’s January Summer Ceilidh was cancelled this year due to Covid settings, so our St Patrick’s Day celebration on 21 March was the first club event of 2022, and a fine one it was.

People really got into the spirit of St Patrick and the Emerald Isle, with members and visitors alike each wearing their own shade of green.

It was great to see new dancers joining in so enthusiastically, with all sorts of Irish-themed accessories – think shamrocks, leprechauns, a bit of glam and a bit of fun. And fun was what it was all about.

As usual, Rod devised a programme of dances with Irish connections, some perhaps apocryphal (eg Lady Glasgow, rumoured by previous club tutor Marjorie Crawford to have been notorious for stealing money from the Irish, but Google provides no clues to the truth of this).

Also as usual, there were a few challenges amongst the dances, for both experienced and newer dancers – but it all added to the fun. It all started well with The Wild Geese, Rory O’More and Rod’s dance The Parting Glass.

Then St Patrick’s Day tripped us up a bit with its requirement for going hardly anywhere in 4 bars (twice), and the reels in Dougal of Shandon were definitely a challenge.

But what did it matter when we had such good company and music to set our toes a-tapping. Accordionist Aileen Logie started the way she meant to go on with a jig for our warm-up music, then gave us lots of Irish flavoured tunes to take us through the night.

Aileen did leave the stage to join in dancing The Parting Glass. However, we still danced to her playing of this evocative set of song tunes, courtesy of a recording she’d made with Hilary Ferral and Jason Morris.

Of course, it wasn’t all dancing and music, we also enjoyed a good supper, with a few special things on offer. There was green tea, home-made apple cake from Elizabeth Ngan, plus green and white apple sherbet lollies and no less than two shades of green serviettes and a lively green tablecloth.

Congratulations to this year’s beginners. They’d only joined us a few weeks earlier, and still managed to dance their way through some tricky and unfamiliar dances.

Thanks to Rod, Aileen, and the club’s more experienced dancers (and our visitors) who made sure everyone had a good time on the dance floor. The night finished with a set of very experienced dancers flying through that old favourite, The Irish Rover.

Kristin Downey
24 March 2022