Better without sequins

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Spent my crazy Friday night naughtily drinking some of my 2005 claret, three years too early, (it’s the best vintage since the turn of the century, and I should make myself wait until 2011 for it to reach its perfect pitch, but sometimes I just can’t) and watching a rather touching film called Shall We Dance, while the dogs slumbered beside me on the sofa. When they sleep, they lie curled into each other like two inverted commas. Such is my wild life. My life was once wild, but more of that much later. Now I live off my hump, like a camel.

Anyway, the film was not Ingmar Bergman, the kind of thing that culture snobs would sniff madly at with their sniffy noses. (I am not one of those for whom elitism is a dirty word; bring on the elitists I say. But I also see no reason why a girl cannot enjoy The Seventh Seal and Sex and the City. Although possibly not at the same time.) It is set in a down at heel ballroom dancing school, and there is a scene in it which made me realise that old-fashioned dancing, cheek to cheek, is one of the great lost arts. The whole Strictly Come Dancing phenom has brought the tango and the rumba and the waltz snaking back into the public consciousness, but it is all about the spangly costumes and the celebrity spats and tears, and not really about the grace of the dance. In the film, there is a lovely moment when Jennifer Lopez (whom I also realise is better without sequins) does a little dance, just wearing a plain skirt and a serious face, and it is a thing of such grace and beauty that I suddenly realised why everyone fell in love at the Cafe de Paris in the thirties.

I am still learning about the art of the blog. I am not quite certain how to do it or why I am doing it or what it is all about or how to get up there with the best of them. Now I think: just write the fucker. It does not have to be perfect. It might be better without sequins.