After going to Blaze II, I must admit when Twirlie Bird suggested another of Franck's weeknders in Scotland it sounded great, then she dropped the bombshell on me. It's a UTOPIA Blues Weekender! Sign me up!
Now there's a problem with very high expectations.. you usually end up feeling a tad short changed somewhere along the line. To say my expectations were high is a gross understatement. But, Franck managed to exceed all my expectations this weekend. A real feast of dancing. If you're on Facebook you may have seen a few of the pictures from the weekend that have already been posted, there's many more to come.
HUGE thanks to Filthy Monkey for putting us up, and putting up with us! A perfect host, and it was lovely to spend a bit of time getting to know him. Talking of great hosts, thanks to Sheena and Franck for looking after us both so well. It was great spending some down time with you both. It was also hilarious spending some social time with Claire, Val and Rocky.
So, onto business in the usual format:
The Good
The Scottish dancers are as accomplished as they are friendly. For exapmle, they seemed able to sense when you were taking a breather and were really understanding. Kindly leaving you to catch your breath and sit out a track with a cold drink without feeling bad because you're having to pospone dances that you're being asked for. When you did take to the floor with these ladies it was a revelation. Scottish girls rock! Pretty much without a single exception they follow beautifully. But with that sense of playfulness that makes what would be an ordinary, nice dance into a memorable one. These are people who understand music, rather than just know moves. Delightful.
There are too many dances to name (and many names I didn't know anyway), I'm sorry if I leave anyone out but I do need to thank Val (sorry I was too busy swooning to concentrate properly), Sheena (more....... please), Freudian Hips (WoW! where did that come from?!?), ClaireS (that second one was certainly good for me ), Lulu Baby (I can't WCS, but it was a fun trying to lead you), Little Monkey, Yliander (the pictures look great but they come no where close to doing our dances justice), Mel (my personal find of the weekend, such a creative lead and follow ), Esther, Aleks, Shea (I told you that you'd manage to get to the tea dance didn't I ), Pauline... ohh look what I've started!! Loads, just loads of fantastic dances. Oddly enough I didn't lead any guys at all this weekend.
It was a long drive home for us after the Sunday tea-dance. So, we spent those hours on the motorway discussing the weekend. When the subject of 'best' dance came up neither of us was able to name just one. That is how good these dancers are. Top notch dance after top notch dance. I was flabbergasted.
Great dances are often born out of great music, and there was also plenty of that this weekend. Trampy set the scene with a great set on the Friday - sadly due to the M6 we were quite late arriving and we missed some of his tunes. He was a trooper playing any set at all as he was suffering badly from a nasty problem with his leg. In Trampy's absence the decks were left for Rocky and Sheena. Saturday's music was billed as up-tempo, and it didn't fall short of that mark. Great tunes, just a little faster than I like, but the tempo was brought down at the end of the evening for an hour or so by Sheena. A cracking set it was too.
We had so much fun on and off of the dance floor. Swapping stories and jokes, eating and drinking, laughing and dancing, and getting to know lots of people much better than we had previously. A fantastic weekend partying with the loveliest people you could hope to meet. We're now looking at trying to get back up for hogmanay.
The Bad
It was a long drive.
The Ugly
The crash on the M8 on Sunday that snarled the traffic up.
The Downright Weird
Deep fried pizza should NOT taste good. My brain was firing those words at me like a mantra as I eagerly munched through every last delicious mouthful of it. See, we stopped on the outskirts of Edinburgh for a fish supper on the way home - I saw it on the menu and thought, when in Scotland...
Bookmarks