На танцующих утят…

Starting’s the hardest thing. After that it gets easier.

I am consumed by a gloom of cosmic proportions. Not anything that could be called depression, because I don’t think I do depression. But just gloom at everything. Gloom that it’s September and I might never see the sun again. Gloom at being a translator, though that is ongoing and, unlike the markets or whatever it is that fluctuates, doesn’t ever ebb (though I am currently working on something which I so don’t understand and from a language I so won’t ever understand that I have been forced to test how brazenly unenthusiastic I am allowed to be about it, resulting in a bollocking from the employer. A friend of mine – a rather delicate, prim queen – did go down the MacDonald’s route here when he’d reached professional rock-bottom and said for his efforts he received 700 euros and abuse from the other staff, so I’m not going into the catering industry just yet). Gloom at being. Gloom both that the Russian hasn’t yet gone to Russia and that he’s going (to stock up on sighs for the winter) at all. Gloom that I haven’t done a solitary social thing since being in the UK however many years ago that was. And gloom that I’ve accidentally given up smoking.

Luckily, my built-in anti-gloom mechanisms have sought and found solace in music, dance, Finns, the Russian and a clever book on, “A journey in the shadow of Byzantium,” that the ever-generous DJ sent me. (Mr. Dalrymple is still obscenely young, unnaturally knowledgeable and, to rub a grain more salt into the wound, a bit of a dish. In the time I might take to wrangle over a tricky decision like whether to have another cup of coffee, he would probably have started another book on something arcane and learned. Depths of gloom.)

So, working-class weddings. The wedding I went to a few weeks ago wasn’t at all WC – I was probably the closest thing there to downright riff-raff – and I was too busy smoking on the street to pay any attention to any of the hits played. I don’t know if Agadoo was line-danced to while I was downstairs smoking with the Germans (because no English people smoke) and trying to pretend I can speak the language after 100 years (t)here (have folk spoken a foreign language ‘at home’? It’s a bit enqueering. Still, the Germans were chuffed to bollocks with my efforts) (and surely Gang Bang is too raunchy for any wedding) (must watch Rita, Sue and Bob Too again one day) (Karl, you still in possession?) (Fucking hell. I’ve got link RSI).

Which all means I was too busy schmoozing and boozing to notice if even the obligatory YMCA got an airing. Which is always good for the homos at any wedding to see which of the hets missed a potential vocation. Anyway, thanks to Ben for lifting the gloom, as I sat wondering about weddings, by inadvertently alerting me to this old, improved version of YMCA. Improved, naturally, by mere dint of coming from Finland, which improves just about anything. Now I’ve been to a Finnish wedding, and can’t remember if the tune got an airing there either, but just how do you make an N or a K with your arms? Any ideas Taiga? Anyone? My own research hasn’t come up with a hard and fast answer yet but I’ve learnt a few new moves for my next Finnish wedding (which might even see me brave auditions if this little gem (which everyone in the world has already linked to. I might just start linking porn and be done with it) ever needs to be remade).

I shared my gloom-alleviation news with the Russian over a sultry, booze-laden kitchen-table last night. The sun, if it had ever been up, was on the way down. My beloved’s features were lit just by the light of three huge fuck-off scented candles. Each had a different scent and, unfortunately, these came together to form the unmistakable stench of cat-piss (though, luckily, my fetishistic quack (sorry to self-link) hasn’t managed to repair my ears and nose (but is now holding out for me to send a combination of poo, wee, blood and goo in the post) (not for free if it’s not pure poo either) so my senses are somewhat dulled). I’d been so enhappied by my clever book, and my Finns and the Russian (and red wine) that I thought it was time to show my darling some of my new moves. But blow me if I didn’t get stage fright. All those seconds of rote-learning and memorising gone out the window. And all I could remember was The Birdie Song.

“You khed zet song in Vest too? Ve khed it in Soviet Union,” the Russian intoned gravely, proving that we can still have cross-cultural conversations after so many years. But the Russian must have mistaken me for some Russian-world dilettante. Of course I know the Russian birdie song. It’s even got words (about dancing ducklings, enumerated above should anyone wish to start a doctoral thesis on the matter). Mind you, it proves once again how far ahead Russians are intellectually of their Western counterparts. For them it was a kindergarten affair, whereas in London (I think I’m not mistaken) it’s performed at The Royal Festival Hall.

Anyway, I got dancing. But, darlings, horror of horrors. I couldn’t remember all the moves. I made my hands into snapping beaks (x4) for the first set of der-der-der-der-der-der-ders, bent my arms at the elbow and flapped my wings (x4) for the second set. Wiggled my bum side to side and swivelled my way down onto my haunches for the third. But could I remember what the action was for the fourth and final set of der-der-der-ders? Could I fuck.

So please let me know. Gloom-aversion depends on it.