The photograph above was taken, this morning, on a beautiful walk around the estuary on Hayling Island. It looks serene, calm, quiet and you would be forgiven if you thought that this was a reflection of our weekend break.
Nothing could be further from the truth!
In actual fact, we were at Warners Lakeside Holiday Village for our annual Jive Time Riot Weekend. We arrived on Friday evening and came home this morning (Monday) and now, after three evening dances and two full days of dance classes, I'm ready for a week of sleep!
We've been going to the dance weekender in Hayling Island for the last six years and pretty much know the ropes. The food is great (can you believe I ate from the carvery all three evenings) and the chalets, although a bit 'hi-di-hi' are perfectly adequate for what we want. Sadly though, it's the end of an era as the huge indoor bowling hall that serves as our dance room is being demolished and so this year was to be the last one at this venue. We could, of course, go to the new venue next year but we feel that maybe this is the time to give it a break.
These are the some of the workshops we attended: tango jive, advanced jive, retro jive,double trouble, Madison Stroll, fast jive and West Coast Swing.
This is a picture of Seamus and Jane teaching the tango jive class.
The weekender was also a good excuse to buy some new dance shoes (Please don't ask how many I have now!) Luckily, while I was away, I sold a story to Take a Break Fiction Feast which paid for them. Actually I could have bought two pairs.
While we are away, we always try to go for a walk, otherwise we're stuck inside all day. As I mentioned at the beginning of the post, we grabbed an hour to walk by the waterside. The weather was perfect.
Now it's back to work on the novel and I'm hoping to manage a magazine story too this week... that's if I can stay awake!
How fitting that for part four of my serial, Charlotte's War, illustrator David Young chose the scene with Charlotte and Denise doing the jitterbug at a dance. Why is that fitting? Well, because that's what I've been doing this weekend - not jitterbugging exactly but close, as my husband and I have just got back from our annual jive weekend at Warner, Hayling Island.
Those of you who have followed my blog since it started in 2012 will know that we are very keen dancers - in fact I've been dancing modern jive for over twenty years now! When I was younger, it used to be classes twice a week and a dance every weekend but over the years salsa, and more recently ballroom and Latin, have taken over as our dances of choice and, apart from the occasional local local dance, we tend to only jive now at this event. This is probably why we enjoy the weekend so much as it is like getting to know an old friend again.
If I show you the timetable, you'll see why I feel ready to sleep for a week.
Anything circled or underlined is a class we did... and that's just the Saturday classes. Sunday was just as full and, on top of that, there were dances each evening until the small hours to practise what we'd learned. The only problem was that each time we did a new class, we'd forget what we'd done in the class before!
The weekend wasn't all about jive, though. There was the opportunity to learn Social Foxtrot, West Coast Swing, Bollywood or Rumba if you wanted. Here's a picture of our lovely Milonga teachers, Andy and Samantha. Milonga is a bit like a fast tango and we've added some of their moves to our own repertoire.
I have to say, it was quite nice to have a proper break from writing, social media etc and be able to do nothing but dance and eat... did I mention the food? I'd better not as you might be jealous. What I will say, is that I'm not sure the dancing burnt off all the calories from the evening carvery!
Two, three rest... two, three rest... that's the rhythm of the Rumba class we took and in some ways it reminds me of my writing. I need those rest phases to get the energy back for the next spell of writing. It's also a bit like my publications. Last week, as well as my serial, I was lucky to have two stories in the People's Friend Special. It often happens that way and then there'll be a break. Here's the one I wrote called The Midnight Sun, which is set in Antarctica.
I hope you all have a good week. I'd planned to do some writing... but I think I'm off for a sleep!
