Day 22, Fiddle ceilidh

11 July 2013

As days run into the next, overlapping the midnight marker, I am losing track of where they should go as diary entries.

Tonight is the fiddle ceilidh at St Peter’s Hall. I think if I had to list the dances through my life in order of fun this would be at the very top of the list. Fiddle tunes fly into the air, every person is on the floor, leaping and twirling in a blur of movement, weaving careful patterns across the room. This is no random movement here but a story that knits us all together in the united rhythmic tapping of shoes on wood. It is a breathless event with no room for rest. Reels and quadrilles have all ages skipping the length of the hall and back again, or spinning until the room is no more than a colour-wash in merry mayhem. When else do we get this opportunity to skip?

With the final Strip the Willow called, we are lined the length of the hall, two sets of 25 pairs or more, swung on the arm of our partners from one person to the next, until we have all been connected with every other person in the room; the inevitable “Whooo-hoo” as the pace builds, and the final collapse of exhaustion at the end.

We spill out into the night and the cool still air outside is welcome on our hot damp skin. My ears tingle in the silence. Mist hangs in layers on the fields so that houses appear to be floating, ghost-like above the ground. As we walk in groups, home along the country road, the Borrodale Hotel beckons us in, with the sound of pipes drifting through its open door. Step dancers take to the floor in the bar. I stay a little while but by 2am, I have to get home if I am to make class at all tomorrow.