A trip to Peterborough

May 7, 2006

It has been almost 2 1/2 years since I last visited Peterborough to start the process of obtaining a UK driving license. Even though I now am more familiar with English roads, I thought I would leave fairly early so that I would arrive while it was still light outside. Thus I arrived around 8:40 PM with minimal fuss – just circling around once before entering the market car park. If anything, walking on foot was more confusing than driving. The downtown seemed nearly deserted, and the Westside Bar was the only place with signs of some life or at least loud music.

I was far from fashionably late. The lessons apparently were over, and 6-8 couples were dancing. After greeting Louise at the door, I decided to keep a low profile and slunk to a table in rear of the dance floor to watch people dance. People who were dancing during the first hour were not spectacular but seemed pretty competent – no worse and probably better than many people who stay after classes for several dances on Wednesdays or Fridays at Club Salsa. While I was sitting around, I was entertaining thoughts like, “I could get up and start dancing but I am not at all certain I could do any more interesting things than people here are doing already.” Whether true or not, it seemed like a good idea to just sit around for a while, so I did.

Slowly, more people I recognized from Cambridge trickled in. Some started dancing. I waited. More people entered. I waited. More people started dancing as well. I waited. A flood of people including Sally, Chris, Lindsey, Chris and Vishal arrived. At this point, I thought that maybe I should go greet them. At this point, I was asked to a dance. So I started dancing.

After 2 or 3 dances, I finally got around to saying hello to Cambridge gang (I guess some of them live outside of Cambridge and even in Peterborough but I still think of them as Cambridge people). I somehow ended up starting a dance with Sally. I thought, “Hmm. This is nice. Unexpected but nice.” Unfortunately about a dozen measure into the dance, another nearby couple (who seemingly came out of nowhere) stepped on Sally’s foot (was it her left foot? I’m not sure). Darn. It wasn’t like the place was packed. The other couple was not particularly good at staying within their space, but it is my responsibility to keep my partner safe. To make matters worse, Sally was supposed to do a dance demonstration later tonight. Yikes.

I tried to dance and socialize with as many (new) people as possible. I’d guess I danced with somewhere between half to three-quarter of followers there. My feet weren’t working at their best, especially early on. Otherwise, it was okay.

There were dance performances by Lindsey and Chris and by Sally and Cristian. I thought Lindsey and Chris’s dance was quite good – there were some moments that seemed a little less than effortless and some places where a shine might have been more appropriate, but I thought it was extremely good performance overall for amateurs and with only few hours of practice; I recall seeing some paid performers who looked considerably worse. Chris did not seem especially pleased with the dance though – then again this is not a bad thing because it probably means he’s trying to set a high standard. Sally & Cristian’s performance was more polished, but they have been dancing for much longer time of course (although not together). To my relief, I didn’t notice Sally having any difficulty moving by the time for her dance with Cristian. What stuck out most about the second performance was the choice of music – blended from many songs including “Hotel California” by the Eagles and a Salsa track containing Frederic Chopin’s Etudes Op 10, no 12 in C minor.

Battle of the DJs was not really a battle or a competition. Both Cristian and Vishal ended up playing some new material – more so for Vishal. By the way, Vishal did play Contigo tonight, but I thought it sounded awful. Too much bass (was it the sound system or sound setting that was at fault?) and played too fast (I’m not completely sure about this). It did not sound like the same song that was played on Thursday or Friday. I wonder if Night in Tunisia could have been made to sound better than it did on Friday. Ditto for Alonzo.

I left around 11:45 PM because I want to get up reasonably early tomorrow. A pleasant evening overall.