Why have I posted a picture like this?  Not one of mine but it has caught the moment for me.

I have just started something very challenging and I hope it will change me.  At least not the inside me, but the outside me.  I have started ballet classes for the over 55’s.  The joy is that I have begun this with my sister.

Now my sister years ago was an actual real life ballet dancer and belonged to a company of dancers and wore tutus and stuff like that.  Me I have always enjoyed dancing and did ballet till I was about fourteen years old.

I have since learnt to do modern jive, a bit of swing, but I have longed for the barre and maybe even a tutu or two!

My first class was a delight and very very funny.  The words ‘fairy elephant’ came to mind.  We had to do something at the barre standing on one leg and sticking the other one out.  I couldn’t do it for the life of me, but I did laugh.  The thing I love about dancing is that it is such life-affirming fun.

We need to do things that are life-affirming, that are fun, that feed the soul, and dancing is one of those things for me.   I will look at this picture and yet I will not yearn – I will do. Perhaps not, perhaps never what I see in my imagination or like the lovely young woman pictured, but I won’t be standing on the sidelines, I will be dancing out loud.