Saturday

The Gate is a really nice venue (if a bit hot). Rohan was his usual charismatic self but he left the most interesting moves til last which left a few people struggling - I'd have preferred it if he'd dumped the shines and concentrated on the last couple of measures. One woman in the class had a novel excuse for not being able to keep up: she wasn't concentrating on what Rohan was saying because Nathalie was so "gorgeous"!

I was just about to compliment one woman in the class on her light following when she smacked me in the teeth with her elbow. She was mortified - fortunately it wasn't serious. I've done it myself a couple of times (a long time ago) so I knew how she felt.
I went to one of Dean Maynard's classes once where he said that he reckoned he'd been hit more times on the dancefloor than he ever had when he was a boxer.

Finally got round to calling a rueda with Tracey, Debbie and Dai, having chickened out and left it to Kate in Risa a couple of weeks ago. We survived, but I definitely need a lot more practice to get any good at it. Tracey and I then sneaked into a rueda Phil was calling, which was good.

Caroline Street was slippery with chip fat on the way to La Tasca. International night is not the best time to go there. Earlier on it was just about possible to carve out space for a dance, and there were some nice people to dance with. I quite enjoy the challenge of trying to dance in a small space, but by 1am it was impossible. Time to go home. (By the way, if you - like me - have trouble hearing the clave on most salsa tracks, Helen was playing them live in La Tasca, loud enough to hear upstairs.)