Western Walkabout: The Dancer
...One dance I have learnt is the passo deena, a Spanish gypsy dance. I love it, feel it, and move with the music. Is there a Spanish gypsy somewhere in my background?...
Richard Harris, a mere 74-year-old, is leaning new dances.
It’s all right for you. I’m haunted by the ghosts of dead ancestors whose languages I don’t understand. They urge me on – to where? What am I supposed to do, grandsire, grand madame?
I know you not.
I’m sitting here, ten thousand miles from where I was born, happy as Larry, looking forward to each meal, each day the Lord sends.
I met an old gentleman on a park seat today. He was eating a sausage roll. He told me he was diabetic, 90 years old, and from Sri Lanka.
I said I was eating the fish and chip lunch – a $5.95 special.
“Do you know,” he said, “I’ve never eaten fish and chips.”
I broke off a piece of fish, and selected a fat chip, and passed them to him on a piece of butcher’s paper torn from my pack.
He nibbled carefully at them.
“That fish was delicious,” he said.
“When you see me again, please speak to me. I don’t see that well these days.”
With that he rose and walked off.
His lucidity impressed me. He was 90 but still a good looking man.
I feel as if I have totally lost the art of conversation. I don’t interact but simply tell stories. What else could you expect from a writer – a minor scribbler? I think one of my ancestral ghosts was in the theatre. I’m drawn to music and dancing, and movies.
Lately I’ve been learning a mix of dances – and to say I haven’t a clue is to put things kindly.
Fortunately, the dancers I meet are tolerant, Christian folk and they urge me on with vast praise for minor accomplishments.
One dance I have learnt is the passo deena, a Spanish gypsy dance. I love it, feel it, and move with the music. Is there a Spanish gypsy somewhere in my background?
I love the bit where you have to stamp on the cockroaches in the samba – or is that the cha cha? Whatever, remember I’m just a learner.
So what am I doing learning to dance at 74? Well you may ask. I feel the discipline of it will be good for me. I have to use my mind to remember the steps and I enjoy the low level of exercise.
A lady aged 83 is one of my teachers, and another teacher is 79, so at 74 I’m a young man to them.
God has his own way of laughing at me.
