I was Beyonce’.

If I crank the old grey back to sixteen and our teachers briefing before our all boys sec mod dance with the local girls school I recall David Culver asking, “Sir, do we put our arms round them?” An important question. There was a spirit of an old black and white war movie in the air. A couple of years before on a Sunday afternoon with my first girlfriend, her parents obligingly having gone out for a walk, I remember liking her as a person on the basis of where she allowed my hand. It was post war simplicity. As I recall not much dancing went on at the dance. At a university dance I walled it deep in consideration of what I might say if I might find myself in a position of talking to a girl. I think I viewed them as I might a Nicaraguan drug runner with a sub machine gun. I blame my mother who often treated me along those lines. And dancing was just as alien. The thought of standing in front of a narcotics criminal doing repetitive body movements I’d seen on Top of the Pops was just unappealing. But as my urge for better Nicaraguan relations became stronger I succumbed to doing the bare minimum on the basis that it was cool, but still ended up more Mr Bean than John Travalta. With time I became quite proficient at innocuous wavy-wavy but then marriage and children put dancing on hold for several years. At around 35 we ventured to a disco and despite being wavy-wavy proficient felt far too old, a condition I presumed one can’t really recover from. At 55 I found myself single again and in need of therapeutic adjustment and started a 5 Rhythms Dance group. To my surprise and enjoyment this was not wavy-wavy, more primary school playground jumpy-flingy-softly-springy. It was about expressing myself rather than fulfilling an image. I took to it like a duck. Suddenly my body was freed from being a puppet of fashion and it loved it. It quite amazed me how much it knew and how capable it was; just give it some good music and it was off with me trailing behind offering the odd suggestion, like ‘please don’t thump someone in the face when you’ve got your eyes closed.’ I’d had this expert dancing body all those years and just hadn’t realised. So at 56 I went to back to discos doing my jumpy-flingy-softly-springy and no one batted an eyelid, not the merest hint of age discrimination or suggestion of being unhinged. Last night at 66 I demonstrated to my wife in the privacy of our front room how well a male can dance to “If you like it you should‘a put a ring on it.” I was Beyonce’. I loved it and so did my wife.