Dancing Queen

Many thanks to vivacious for the great header.

Dancing Queen

By

Abba – 1977

There was definitely more emphasis on work than play during 1977 and it was not the most eventful of years. My Mum was now employed in a shop at the Nottingham Castle Museum, my Dad had become a grounds man for a campus of schools in Nottingham, David was now employed at a new local Special Needs school and I was teaching a class of nine-to-ten year olds, as well as coaching one of the best Netball teams our school ever produced. It being the year of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee meant anyone working in the public sector was busy preparing for the celebration. I remember burning the midnight oil on several occasions with colleagues as we rehearsed and prepared for our special concert of music, drama and dancing. It was extremely hard work but a very successful event.

Mum, Boo and I spent our annual holiday in the Isle of Wight as usual. I remember this as the year one of our walks took a wrong turn and we ended up in someone’s garden. It happened to be the Vicarage in Calbourne and the Vicar was not pleased. As he marched over his precious lawn, arms flailing and robes flying in the breeze, it was hard to suppress the rising giggles. After a lecture on the pain of holidaymakers and the invasion of privacy he concluded by asking us if we’d like it if he came and had a picnic on our garden. The visual of a Vicar eating cucumber sandwiches on our postage stamp lawn being watched by the ethnic and mad Irish neighbours was too much for us and we ended up roaring with laughter all the way back to Shanklin.

In the summer David and I took Louise and his two dogs to Devon for a self catering holiday. I don’t remember much about it apart from it not being a particular warm week and Emma the Dalmatian spending most of her time trying to snaffle a huge, rotting dead fish on the beach. Louise and I had bonded to some extent, but there were still moments of resentment on both sides, particularly as she objected to anything I cooked. She was seven that year and typically didn’t like anything outside the range of burgers, sausages, chips and mash. I came from a family of excellent cooks where there was always variety and found it hard to conceive that even David considered Spaghetti Bolognese quite exotic at the time.

David and I continued to play Badminton regularly and I also took an evening course in Trampolining. I’d always been fairly interested in sport but never obsessed; David on the other hand seemed to sometimes live and breathe sport, football and cricket in particular and on the odd occasion I’d tire of listening about it or watching it on television. But I accepted many men are this way and tried to focus more on the things we did enjoy together. Sometimes, my Mum would go on holiday and we’d bring Boo to stay at David’s house. I enjoyed our outings with the three dogs and was often amused by the fact that although Boo was a quarter of the size of the other two, she’d always be at the front and seemed to consider herself leader of the pack.

One thing I missed about Nigel was his dancing ability. David turned out to be a typical bopper on the dance floor, but again I didn’t see this as a major problem. I still went ten pin bowling with a team on Monday Nights and became quite friendly with a man named Rob, who was also in the process of a divorce. We’d sit and chat in the bar after matches and I found him easy and amusing company. On one occasion I mentioned how I missed having a good dancing partner and he offered to take me to the up and coming Bowling presentation night. I’d already asked David, but thought if I approached him and explained I’d rather maybe just go with my Mum seeing as he didn’t really know anyone, he might back out and I’d get to dance with Rob. But it was not to be; David wanted to accompany me, so I never did get to be a dancing queen that night. I guess alarm bells could have started ringing if I’d thought long and hard about it, but at the time I just accepted it as David wanting to be sociable. Hindsight, as we know, is a wonderful thing.

As the year came to a close I reflect back and feel although I was not unhappy, I was once again just drifting through my days. At twenty-seven I was still uncertain about what I really wanted from the future, but seemingly resigned to the fact I wasn’t going to get it, no matter what it was.

Cool English holiday in Devon. No sunbathing but beach games kept us warm.