Sunday 25 April 2010

Modern Jive and what I did before.


I’ve been dancing for a couple of years now. I used to spend my spare time teaching people how to fly gliders at the RAF Gliding Centre now based at RAF Halton. Gliding was fun, social and surprisingly energetic. There is  a certain satisfacion of using a small amount of energy to launch a glider and then through native wit and intelligence extending that flight to tens of nimutes or indeed several hours. There is even a fitness component. When gliders did not land accurately: which they usually don’t when be flown by ‘ab-initio‘ students learning under instruction. (‘Ab-initio’ literally means from the start, there’s a quite a bit of multilingual stuff in aviation: ‘aileron’ is apparently French for little wing). As I was saying: when gliders do not land accurately (as opposed to safely which they overwhelmingly do), there is a fair amount of manhandling. This is often aided by some sort of tractor retrieve vehicle. It still means jumping in and out of the glider, turning it around and walking back to the launch point. This could be half a mile across the airfield. It provideds a fair amount of low level exercise. If there is a list of 100 things to do before you die, a flight in a glider will surprise you. Very few people say it turned out how they thought. It is typically far more peaceful. The views far more splendid, fascinating and exhilarating than people expect. This is even true when gliding is even compared to the view and experience of a small powered aeroplane.

When you do anything, if you do it for an extended period of time, it needs to be varied enough to present new aspects. In gliding this can range from flying high above the French Alps as opposed to the UK. It can be flying further than before or to and from different locations. It can be gliding in different designs (from the ealiest type of Primary glider to the much more modern ASW27B). It can also mean flying with different people. Because gliders fly in simpatico with the weather and conditions change from minute to minute each flight is inherently different to the last.

For various reasons after 20 years of enjoyment and many memorable occasions, the thoughts of which still give rise to smiles, I hung up my instuctors rating and started looking for a fresh pastime. I tried a couple of types of dancing, and modern jive was the one that clicked. This was possibly because initially the footwork was not too important. Most likely it was because several very pretty young ladies were prepared to put up with my stumbling attempts and even smiled! Still if young ladies were not prepared to put up with guys making complete fools of themselves, the human race would have died out long ago. Curiously, dancing with ladies in steletto heels occasionally gives rise to being stabbed in the chins by same heals. It has been statistically far more dangerous than flying without the aide of an engine. This is still true when compared  to teaching somone that you know can't fly (yet) or just is learning to fly! 

In dancing, there are different partners, different songs, different moves and different movement.  It’s indoors, so weather does not change. Dancing is a contact sport. So there are inherant dangers apart from stilletos! There is always the challenge of dancing more smoothly and interpreting the music in a more empathic way.  When I started a few years ago the classes at Henley on Thames were given by a couple called Simon and Nicole. There was always an element of humour in their teaching. Simon was (at times?) quite chauvinist, it was all clearly tongue in cheek and good natured.  Unfortunately they left the franchise running Ceroc at Henley. The replacements and their subsequent replacements did not do as well. Henley closed for the foreseeable future last week. There was one major thing going against Henley: the hall is quite echoic. Half way down the hall the beat becomes quite indistinct. The beat, you understand, is quite important for dancing! There was a solution: more speakers placed down the hall. This worked for a couple of weeks. However the guys setting them up didn’t do it properly so it went back to being difficult to follow the music in about half the hall.

I was also lucky at Henley: not only with Simon and Nicole but also because the "taxi dancers" who took what I refered to as the remedial lesson (they refered to it a the repeat beginners class) were charming, appoachable and clearly inerested in helping people to learn to dance.

Simon and Nicole disappeared from my radar for a while, but recently I heard they were doing a classes in Woodley near Reading.  I went along a few weeks ago. It was a lovely atmosphere. The class was intense but in an enjoyably challenging way. They are dancers who clearly care about dancing. Personally I do get the feeling that with a larger franchise such as Ceroc Thames Valley that profit plays a very significant part. It is a business and as a dancer your primary value is the fee on the door. In contrast, with Simon and Nicole the dancing and enjoyment of dancing comes first second and third.  If you like modern Jive, have a few years experience, feel you are doing the same moves in the same soulless way and think that there could be more to it: you will very likely enjoy one of Simon and Nicole’s classes smooth Jive classes tremendously.

Be prepared to feel like you are starting to learn to dance all over again: I do! Let’s face it though: it was fun the first time around, and I believe you may find this is more satisfying. Parking is easy and free. If you Google or Bing the post code: RG5 4JB  the arrow will be a little misleading:
Simon and Nicole also have a page on facebook.

Saturday 24 April 2010

What a marvelous series...


And by that I don’t mean another Marvel Comics film franchise. No, this one leant on the title of an entirely different film genre and film: “A Beautiful Mind”.  For those of you who have not seen this film, it is about a brilliant Mathematician who becomes delusional. Not perhaps the most inspiring premise for a film but it claimed 4 Oscars and it’s a film I’ve watched more than once with satisfaction and enjoyment. On each occasion the depth, colour and acting was rich enough to keep me there till the end.

This “Beautiful Minds” is a recently completed series on the Beeb, still available on iPlayer. This captivating run (hopefully to be repeated) took 3 living and award winning scientists and interviewed them, their co-workers and families about their achievements and philosophy. The programmes not so much delved into their work (indeed this was broadly glossed over) but entertainingly examined their mind set and the views of them held by their colleagues, friends and family. It also examined some of the mirad the factors that lead up to their most prominent work. The scientists were:

Jocelyn Bell Burnell who briefly at the time made the news as a foot note when astoundly regular pulses (once again for the period) were discovered using the then new Cambridge Radio Telescope.  All the attention (and subsequent Nobel prize) was focused on her boss: the team leader Antony Hewish. The phrase ‘for every great leader there is a greater woman behind him’ sprung to mind. The currently accepted theory explaining Pulsars and subsequently Black Holes has lead to some of the most exacting tests of and successful predictions by Einstein's general theory of relativity. At the same time it has lead to the deepest unanswered questions about our known universe.  Yes that’s the same theory that played a part in Stephen Hawking appearing on the Simpsons.   

James Lovelock who for a period definitely would have been described as “a bit of a nutter” for his obsevations on what would become know as the Gaia hypothesis . This was until after over a year of continued pillory and ostracisation by his peers, he proposed a very elegant refutation of the general criticism that his proposal required a controlling mind. This senario is know as Daisy world

Sir Tim Hunt who won the Nobel prize for Medicine in 2001 together with Sir Paul Nurse and  Leland H. Hartwell. This was for fundamental work describing some of the controling mechanism of cell division. In other word why we are not still Amoebas. The really nice thought is that with Britain having one of the highest populations of Nobel Prize winner we may hopefully look forward to more new episodes in the future... 

Links:
Einstein on U-Tube: perhaps that should be more correctly U-Tube on Einstein.  Actually there are an entire series of videos here.

Friday 23 April 2010

The way home (en france s’il vous plait ) from agency software.


Mon petit concombre, ceci est le stylo de ma tante. Translations courtesy of my school boy french and babelfish

I was on my way home from writing some more staff bank or agency software.

It was getting late: the streets were almost deserted. The occasional distant figure noiselessly disappeared around a corner. It was a really quite quiet. The sun was still up. Buildings: small, strove to become skyscrapers: serene shadows stretching silently ever further down vacant pavements. Peace and tranquillity filled the air. Hardly a thing moved...

There was a sound. A surprising sound. A very pleasant sound. A young French female voice from behind said “excuse me”. Another person about this late? Well it was only 6:15.  That is late for Henley on Thames where the good citizens have departed the multitude of Coffee shops (once shoe shops), dress shops, charity shops and estate agents.


“Excuse me” I turned. A delightful willowy brunette apparition appeared. What did she want? I was prepared to defend my honour! - But only to a point... did she know?

Seemingly and disappointingly not.  “I’m looking for number 50“ she said. “There do not seem to be any ‘ouse numbers....” she continued. “It is not like in America where streets and ‘ouses are numbered.” I pointed out that as America was inhabited by Americans they had to have a system which was easy to understand. Her laugh was as quick. We old Europeans have to stick together and this was certainly a very acceptable face of France.  “It has to be this way I said.” We walked down Bell St. There were all of two shop fronts or 'ouses numbered.:

 and
Even with only one in twenty fronts numbered, cinquante was easy.
She wanted the French restaurant at Le Parisien.  All too soon it appeared.

She thanked me.

Ah well back to Waitrose for the shopping. Henley is a very pleasant place. Note to self: I must paint over some more House numbers...