A Post Which Barely Meets The Naughtiness Criteria

Poor Antipo is hobbling around today in an extremely inelegant parody of a pretty cowboy who has spent a little too much time on Brokeback recently. But the cause of my physical discomfort is really quite pure and innocent! After a two year break from ballet, I enrolled again at the local village ballet school and was reunited on Tuesday night with my old teacher and friends, to everybody's great delight.

Don't be too impressed with my exploits - please! We do not wear tutus and pointe shoes. We most certainly do not leap athletically yet gossamer-lightly across the stage like Anna Pavlova or Margot Fonteyn. (Although, in my mind I do, actually.) However, I suppose the grunts and groans we emit as we bend and stretch and try to lift our legs higher than our waists could be considered evocative of the death rattle of the Dying Swan.

Indeed, my class is informally known as the Tuesday Night Plump Housewives Nostalgically Attempting To Recreate Their Lost Youth class. We attend with almost as much enthusiasm as we write the hefty cheques to pay for our young and slender daughters' tuition in the afternoon classes.

Because it is, quite simply, a truly lovely way to get some exercise and unstiffen our elderly joints, all to the strains of beautiful classical music. Somehow it is a great deal more satisfying than simply leaping about in sweaty lycra in an aerobics or jazzercise class. There is a certain hallucinatory poetry (probably due to severe oxygen deprivation) about the whole business, and I love it!