My daughter and I went to a Ceilidh last year, in a local venue that is super friendly but we were too shy to dance.  We vowed to go again and do it properly.  Which is how we came to find ourselves in a packed hall on Friday night.

The band is incredible, not a sheet of music to be seen and they are a ‘pop up’ which means that they just turn up and play.  I have nothing but admiration for them – there seems to be very little in the way of instruction and everything by way of coordination.

And then there’s the caller.

A man stands up and announces the next dance – all the dances have names, then he walks us through the steps and eventually enough of us have an idea of what is happening and off we go.

My granddaughter was on holiday from uni so she came too and danced with her Mum.

And a man came over and asked if I would like to dance.

He obviously knew the steps and guided me through.

I did my best.

Every now and again (we had several dances) I made a wrong move and he laughed.  I had a dreadful moment of fear – I thought he would get cross and storm off.  Of course, he wasn’t and he didn’t but I was reminded just how deep the damage goes when you are hurt day after day by someone who wants to point out where you are going wrong.

We all sweated and twirled, it could have been the 1950s but we danced and worked out our left from our right.  We dozy dooed and we split the willow and I got very dizzy!

I thanked this tall, kind man at the end of the evening (and no, I didn’t ask him if he would like to see my van) and chalked up another ‘first’.