Our final event of the main dance season was the weekend of 15/16 September when another somewhat reduced side attended the ‘7 Champions Ail’ weekend, based at the Village Hall in Benenden in Kent, quite near the legendary treacle mines. Another excellent weekend, blessed with great weather and fine teams (7 Champs, Downes-on-Tour, Gaorsach, Iron Men + Seven Guilders amongst others). Sue was otherwise engaged (completing the Great North Run in a highly respectable time) so Emma had kindly agreed to fill in for her on accordion, and an excellent job she did for us over the weekend. On the Saturday we headed off to Hastings for dancing in brilliant sunshine on the seafront and in the old town centre before returning to Benenden for tea and more dancing at The Bull up the road. The evening extravaganza had a theme of simply ‘Queen’, which featured a variety of suitably dubious outfits including our very own Paul, dressed in a fetching off-purple 2-piece and pearls, looking just like the queen would have done on a particularly boring night with the corgis at Balmoral, the rain teeming down outside. There were also, amongst the other royals, several fierce looking Freddie Mercurys, some Brian Mays, and one or two Dancing Queens. The meal featured a variety of meal choices cooked by individual Champs (or their pressganged partners), to be followed by a series of spots from each of the guest teams interspersed with some ceilidh dancing to a particularly high class scratch band. BB’s contribution to the evening featured a reprise of the Russian spot most recently seen at our 35th in July. Once again this went extremely well, especially the bit early on where at our 35th Rob strode to the front and performed a series of energetic cartwheels. Without Rob this time, Paul instead strode to the front, still in his lovely Queen ensemble complete with handbag, and performed a short sequence of ‘dad dancing’ moves culminating in a quick unscripted knicker flash – there’s just no holding him back sometimes. On the Sunday a very depleted jig team bravely kept its end up at the lunchtime pub session, once again greatly indebted to Emma for getting all the right notes, all in the right order!
