A couple of swingers

Now that I have retired, it's been a good opportunity to get out a little more.

I haven't been to the Key Theatre - Peterborough's only theatre - since Tom was in Smike (a school musical) in his first year at King's School. That's about 18 years ago!

It's a good job the theatre doesn't depend on the likes of me to keep going.

Well, I hope to be able to go to the theatre more regularly in the future and I've booked up a number of shows, the first being a show called Swinging at the Cotton Club – which was billed as a recreation of the dance and music from the famous American club of the 1920s.

It sounded quite good and we had a pretty nice evening. There was a live band - Harry Struthers' Hot Rhythm Orchestra, who all looked over 70, but did a pretty good job - and a dance group called the Jiving Lindy Hoppers (two men and three women), plus a tap dancer and a woman singer. There's a video here:  

There was Lindy Hop, Charleston and tap and it was good clean fun (as they say). The band was unusual in that there was no bass player, instead the rhythm came from a massive sousaphone, which must have been a challenge to hold, let alone blow, for the white-haired chap playing it.

The best part of the evening came right at the end. A chap dressed in Teddy Boy gear had sat in front of us. He'd been hugely enthusiastic all the way through the show, almost to the point of being annoying. In the last number, the Lindy Hoppers came down into the audience to grab people to take up on stage to jive. The last time I jived, I missed a crucial grab with my partner and she almost demolished the DJ's turntables by crashing into them, so perhaps it's as well I wasn't asked. The Teddy Boy, sitting at the end of the front row, was a shoo in, but when he got up on stage, he was the most unco-ordinated jiver you could imagine. He was so bad, the professional left him to it and went to find someone else. The Ted grabbed his wife/partner, pulled her on stage and she was even worse than him!