Stripping at the seaside

A fabulous weekend in St Annes with one of the oldest--I mean, longest-standing--readers of this blog, who made the long journey up from Hampshire, as it was time to give our snazziest slacks an airing at the Soulful Dance Weekender. It was a pleasure to have your company T and I'm honoured and grateful that you're prepared to schlep up all that way.

It's a very enjoyable musical culture to be involved with, more collective and openly friendly than any other I've been involved with. I found rave music promised more togetherness than I encountered, and contemporary classical music's mannered and regimented sociability perhaps reflects the high value placed on privacy in middle class culture.

On Saturday lunchtime, while T went to join the Cod Army, the name given to the supporters of Fleetwood FC, I spent what was intended to be an hour, which turned into two, down the pub. St Annes is a very friendly place and the ease with which people chat to you down there made me think that Alan Bennett might have a point in his unfavourable assessment of the sociability of Lancaster folk in his Untold Stories.

I conceived a dislike of Lancaster I’ve never since lost. Having seen madness on that ward [in the asylum to which his mother was committed], I saw it echoed in face after face in the town. Though it’s a pleasant enough place I find the people there less amiable and appealing than elsewhere in Lancashire, with the possible exception of Liverpool. There’s an openness and generosity in Blackburn, Preston and Rochdale, maybe because these were virtues fostered in the mills; Lancaster, commercial, agricultural and (like Liverpool) once a port, seems sullen, tight-fisted and at night raw and violent.

In the pub in Lancaster, a few weeks ago a man in a local pub walked off, muttering "You are a selfish man". I had asked him if a seat on his table for four which he was occupying alone, was taken. With the effusive warmth Bennett noticed in the locals, he gave me a black look and said nothing, which I took as consent. In Glasgow, or the places I go anyway, you just ask someone if they'd mind budging up a bit.

Back in the hotel, after one of the restorative afternoon naps that we require at our age, we danced till 4am, surrounded by some lovely scenery.

Yesterday morning the cleaning lady came into my room and said (I quote verbatim): "Oh, it's alright, I'll come back later. I was just going to do a strip."

On Sunday afternoon T went off to catch his train. I had just missed one so hung around in the pub. Again I had the feeling that the town loves to talk, and the next table and I had a conversation about heart attacks which was funnier than the subject matter might suggest.

The same people are doing another night there in December, to which Trina is coming. I'm very pleased that I am reviving her interest in dancing which was drummed out of her by her husband. When she was married, she used to have to buy CDs in secret and hide them, since her husband, who liked Pink Floyd, Yes, Genesis, and so on, was very critical of her tastes, which he thought frivolous.

Track of the Weekend was Sean Smith's Paradise. Over such a good system, it did indeed sound like Paradise's soundtrack.