Sally-Part 99. DIRTY DANCING THOUGH NOT IN THE NORFOLK BROADS !

I HAD THE POTENTIAL TO BE COOL BUT IT JUST NEVER HAPPENED !

Am I the only man who has got through life without once being 'cool' ?

Has any other man ever had people shake their heads in disbelief as often as people have shaken theirs at me ?

Is there a worse dancer than me ?

Is there a worse dancer than me who also thinks, like me, that he is the coolest man on the dance floor or spent more time staring at his own snakeingly sinuous shadow whilst barely acknowledging the presence of the poor female who has accepted the opportunity to dance with him ?

DEFINITELY NOT COOL BUT NOT BAD FOR 62 ! SHIRLEY TOOK THIS TO WARN OTHER WOMEN TO KEEP THEIR HANDS OFF HER PROPERTY ! OBVIOUSLY, ON THE DANCE FLOOR I WOULD ADD A SALAMI TO THE SADLY LACKING AREA !

Ah! But that shows my age because people do not dance with one another any more.

 They don't touch ! They can't possibly appreciate the pleasure of flesh against flesh, or rather, the feel of parts upon parts !

 Non-specified parts but I know as well as any man of my age the electric shock and sheer pleasure of even the briefest 'accidental', yeh,yeh! most fleeting hint of pubic arch against thigh !

  Whoops ! I have been specific there ! Too specific if you ask me !

Oh! That's the lady's against mine not the other way round as that would have been perverted !
Mm ! Would that be perverted if it could be engineered ever so discreetly ?

No, today's impoverished clubbers know only what they have learnt by watching and copying the crowds in 'Kevin And Perry Go Large In Ibiza' !

They bounce or shift their weight from one foot to another rather than dance, in a self-sealed trance with their fingers and hands making ridiculous shapes whilst checking their i-phones regularly but otherwise not communicating with each other !

And some of them do it under the influence of  what I think would be a child's pink aspirin which is the colour of what we were given when we were ill as children ! So, do clubbers take pink tablets to help prevent them getting a headache ?

NOW THAT IS COOL !

What a waste modern dancing is of a good opportunity to seduce with a raised eyebrow or have an unabashed letch at other women over your partner's shoulder !

I don't dance anymore !

Dancing is for women to do and men to watch women doing and never have I been more sure of anything since watching the men of 'The Ladyboys Of Bangkok' lollop around the stage for two hours of making idiots of themselves, believing as only Gay men can that they are gorgeously attractive !
No Ladyboys ! No amount of dress fabric, six-inch heels, false eye lashes or pouting will give you a woman's hips !

When I asked my original question a few paragraphs ago, I wasn't even thinking of writing about dancing ! I was thinking about failing to impress several hundred people lining The Norfolk Broads who were watching me trying to stop my hired houseboat drifting without power into the river's crowded boating channel where it would have collided with several other craft before ending pinned across the entrance to one of those ancient and very low bridges, causing who knows what damage to the bridge's fabric and starting a jam that would quickly have led to much screaming, fist-waving and generally flusterd riverine pandemonium !

We had just dodged under the bows of a speeding Russian cargo ship which moments later ploughed into the bank on a tight turn !
I had come round the bend and momentarily forgot which side of the river I should be on when I saw the monster looming over me hooting continuously.
Had I read the instructions when I took charge I would have known that continuous blasting on a ship's horn meant that it was out of control  because it had hit an iceberg !

As Shirley and the children screamed, " Watch out old chap !" or something similar, I threw my vessel's two horsepower engine into reverse, put the tiller hard over to starboard and returned the hysterical and deafening blasting of the ship's horn with an almost inaudible 'peep peep'  from my own !

As we emerged from under her towering flanks : a ship is always female even if having a woman on board is bad luck: my lot gathered round me whooping and cheering, slapping me on the shoulders and generally treating me as if I had just won a great sea battle.....say Trafalgar !
This actually happened in about 1983 and you can check it on the internet ! The Captain was drunk and he really did drive his ship into the bank, although my recollection of my being hero-worshipped on my own vessel might be slightly exaggerated !

Somewhat flustered and needing a short break to calm my nerves, I started to bring my hundred-footer towards a bankside mooring  with seamless precision when the engine suddenly cut out !
Nothing would restart it and as we were now heading towards an enormous Holly Bush, I quickly and stupidly decided to grab it and pull the boat shoreward !

Now have you ever tried stopping twenty tons of houseboat by grabbing a Holly Bush ?
It was not the right decision, firstly because of the pain as my entire body disappeared into the bush and secondly because the current soon started to pull the boat back out towards midstream !

Though pierced thouroughly and with panic shrieking from my lot, I clung on desperately and clenching a mooring rope in my teeth I hooked one foot around the Holly's trunk and wedged the other through the spokes of my ship's wheel, intending to jump for dry land and tie up !
The current started to win the battle and try as I might, the gap between my feet increased at an alarming rate and at the point where I was in a full splits position and certain tendons were stretched further than a gentleman's tendons should be stretched, the wheel's spokes gave way and I was suddenly lying on my back completely covered by the Holly bush, with the mooring rope torn from my mouth and shouting in a very high-pitched voice for my hysterical wife to sound seven long blasts on a hooter that was barely louder than a child's bicycle bell as she drifted away from me with our cargo of three precious children, none of whom were wearing life jackets !

 Well this was the eighties and long before we were all forced to wrap ourselves in cotton wool and sue everyone for neglect !

If you remember from another Blog, Shirley has never learnt to drive a car after I tried to teach her on a left-hand drive Fiat 500 and a Saab 95 with a column gear change, so finding herself alone on the deck of a rudderless ship justifiably terrified her !

Thankfully other boaters had seen what was going on and through tears of laughter, came to the rescue and  tied the boat to the bank where a diver quickly  removed the plastic farm sack that had wound itself around our propeller: an apparently regular occurence !

Some people even remembered that I was held fast in the centre of a Holly Bush and eventually hacked me out !

Once the pain in my groin had subsided and all the leaves had been pulled out of my face and hands and Shirley's sobbing had calmed to merely a gentle crying, I was able to see as funny a side to the whole thing as my children and the onlookers had, although thirty years later I have yet to hire another houseboat !

SO COOL IT HURTS !

And yet in the intervening years we have found ourselves stuck on a shallow mudbank in a launch that came with a rental house thanks to Gemma's bloody-minded steering; drifting in a hired dinghy on Loch Ken when the yard hadn't checked how little fuel they'd sent us off with; motoring along an overwhelmingly flooded Thames in 1979, totally unaware of the lethal danger we were in, in a tiny boat that also came with a rental house and finally, trapped in yet another rental house launch with my mother waffling on and on, out of control and driving my poor wife to the edge of despair !

It's worth going back to have a look at the photo in Part 21 of Mum and Shirley in our boat because I can't find it to print here again ! Shirley's face says it all ! The look a wife reserves only for her husband !