Sabado

Salsa Celtica seem to be flavour of the month lately so I thought it was worth going to see them on Saturday. Not many dancers there (I believe there may have been some kind of sporting event earlier that evening) and the band had been delayed by a burst tyre on the drive down.

Maybe they didn't have time for a soundcheck: the sound balance was really rough in the first half, too loud and painfully trebly. You can't fault the musicianship, and the fusion of celtic and Latin music worked a lot better than I expected – to listen to. But the dancing wasn't that great. When the tempo was right they were fine, but that only applied to a few of the tracks: the rest were either chachacha (not really my thing) or just that bit too fast to dance to comfortably except with a really light and experienced partner.

Thinking it was just me having a bad night (everyone else seemed to have enjoyed it) I nearly didn't go to La Tasca afterwards. But actually that was great: laid-back, nice people - though none of the usual Spanish/Latino crew - and consistently danceable music. I danced with a couple of women who'd been at the SC gig and enjoyed myself a lot more, even though the lack of space and the need to protect the partner from flying elbows meant I couldn't do anything fancy.

In fact that's probably why La Tasca is so much fun if you go there in the right mood: everyone knows there's no space to show off so you can just get into relaxed, easy dancing. I had intended to leave by midnight, but I didn't actually manage to drag myself away for another hour.