May week: cdc and playford balls

OK, for the record, a brief summary of may week.

Friday

CDC Ball. I nearly didn't go, I've forgotten lots of fun dances (even foxtrot, vienese and samba), but it turned out well. At first there were few people I knew and I hovered rather, but then I met several old friends from dancing, including a few people from Trinity I'd forgotten ever did dance. And atreic arrived, and we spent ages chatting, and she gave me a lift back. The dancesport team were very shiny.

Saturday

Playford ball. As tangoing at CDC is to James Bond or Harry Tasker, so Playford is to Firefly! Well, not quite. But it's all old-fasioned much smouldering stares no touching circling each other with occasional swinging and complicated progressions stuff.

For anyone who doesn't know, it's organised by the Round, the country dancing society, who do regular (and great!) ceilidhs.

I was a bit worried not having practiced before, but it mostly went ok. And people were happy to help, though sometimes that was more transitive than others: one old gentleman was absolutely brilliant, giving a little nudge in the right direction whenever we hesitated, but never seeming patronising or even to notice; another couple were helpful, but rather overbearing, and made us feel we shouldn't have been trying if we couldn't do it right first time, and called advice which was perhaps more helpful to someone who knew what all the words mean.

It reminds me of playing dominos against dad in the pub; when I'd been hesitating one of the spectators would say "You could play that one," I can't tell if he means "That's a valid domino and I don't know why you haven't seen it" or "there's a 50/50 chance he has the double six, so don't play that one, but if you play this, he can only score two points from these dominos, and you have a counter to those ones, so your expected return is ok" which is what the cider is busily muzzing me to see, and I don't want to ASK becasue then that tells dad what I have.

In other musings, food was nice. And we talked a lot about education. And Naath asked me to dance with a very gracious "Jack! Here! Now!" :) And how does the room always go quiet just before you say 'moosefuckers'? *After* makes sense, but before? That's non-causal!

Oh, and I went to some CULES sketches in the afternoon, with several people I knew in. They were good, though, while I'm very fond of "Let's self-deprecatingly announce this is a bad play and then say some innuendo" humour, it was possibly overdone. But they all had some classic lines, and it's lovely and relaxing to sit and watch for once.

This weekend

This saturday I shall mostly be going to london again. Does anyone other than Owen and you-know-who want to book any of my time? :)

Annoyingly, my best london friend is visiting Cambridge this weekend, but otoh, it means we can exchange keys and both have somewhere to sleep :)

Belated may week: sunday tolkien punting

Tolkien punting. The first of two events some responsibility for organising had fallen upon me (followed by poohsoc, and culimnating in my omnipotent apotheosis next fri), which in retrospect was stressing me rather, though it all worked out in the end. There were innumerable unexpected hurdles. My bike buckled catastrophically[1] yesterday, meaning I was running late and I was getting a punt so had to cadge a lift from becky making *her* late. We had to send people for last minute bread. Trinity was closed due to may ball and there was a nice but atypically unhelpful porter ("OK, I apologise, I didn't realise I couldn't bring people in. Do you mind if I ask what I can do? Can I in fact hire punts today?" "No." "Damn. Can I go to the punt station by myself and pick up other people upstream?" "Yes." "THAT'S WHAT I FUCKING JUST SAID." -- I'm so bad at talking to people (though I didn't say this last bit)). Then I couldn't work out how many people were missing.

But we eventually got off and then everything was fun, though we were attacked by greenery sometimes. There was much innuendo. There was very nearly a poohsoc meeting, but being in a punt next to someone makes skum[2] startlingly vulnerable to tickling so I headed that off.

We had anors (cts magazine) including CDs of a new audio tolkieny sketch[3] stemming from the incomparable Tim K and Richard S and others, and a remastered "Lord of the Goons". There was wonderful food, mainly thanks to Becky again.

Afterwards I'd hoped to go to Pippa's party or Tim's bbq, but in the end just went home, watched Dr Who[3] and fell asleep.

[1] As in, uncrecoverably, not as in dangerously.
[2] sonicdrift, roleplaying joke.
[3] "Defeat the Dark Lord the Burkiss Way"
[4] It was good. I could have done with a less Deus ex Mechanical ending (What *is* the adjectival form of Deus Ex Machina anyway?[3]), though it was narritively if not scientifically set up. Polybikissingsquee shinypretty. Though I hope they don't make a habit of it, Tennant just doesn't have the ears, and it'd be too much like a soap opera. My love for Jack was confirmed, after finding him annoying in the first episode. But I think they were right to leave him behind. And he recalibrated the Annedroid, ok? We know he can because he did before.