Blame it on

Dash and Mabel are both doing dance classes again this term. Mabel's is called "Pre-Dance," a step up from last Spring's "Creative Movement" but with much the same group of children and much the same activities. Dash's is called "Pre-Jazz" and he's one of two boys among a bevy of girls. He loves it, and I hope the girls realise how sought-after a boy is in a dance class. (They probably don't.) He took his umbrella to the farmer's market on Sunday morning, hoping for rain so he could do a spot of Gene Kelly. It was only very slightly overcast, but he wouldn't leave it in the car and I spotted him twirling it later on.

On Saturday there was a blues festival in our local downtown. We went down, town, to see the goings-on and get Dash a haircut. While the boys went to the barber's, Mabel and I procured some bread and an apple and sat on a step watching the band. They were pretty good.

The sound of a saxophone always does something to my tummy. The good sort of something, like you used to get remembering a particularly good kiss the night before with your new boyfriend. Jazzy bluesy saxophoney electric-base-guitary music is probably my favourite sort of sound, especially when it makes your hips wiggle and your toes twitch. But children have no respect for art, and once Dash emerged - with the side parting he'd requested making him look like a quintessential English schoolboy of the 1940s - they both wanted to be climbing trees rather than sitting around watching old men in Hawaiian shirts plunk and plink and croon and badum-tssshhhh.

We moved on, up to a playground for a while, and then back down past the music again towards the car in the hopes of finding some holy barbeque for dinner. (Local Catholic church fundraiser.) On the way we met some friends and there was some more delay. We were behind the stage now, but the music was still loud and clear in the area where we were. Dash, in a dark-blue t-shirt and tan shorts, was at the top of a flight of fire-escape steps. His father (as it happened, wearing a mid-blue t-shirt and brownish chinos) was at the bottom. They boogied towards, and away from, and back towards each other again, one going up and the other down, to meet in the middle; and if a jealous Mabel hadn't been physically turning my head away so that I couldn't enjoy the spectacle, I would have been very much enjoying it.

Another of those moments to capture, really, only this time I needed a video camera and I didn't have a thing. It's enough to make one covet an iPhone, really. I love a man who can dance.