Bring on the Dancing Girls

It started in March 2002, on Mothers’ Day, when I stopped smoking. To keep my mouth and fingers busy I bought myself a mouth organ and taught myself to play by ear. Whenever I felt the urge to have a fag, I picked up the Harmonica instead. I really enjoyed playing but the trouble was that no-one enjoyed listening. As the year progressed I very slowly but gradually improved but no one seemed to be impressed.

Our Rural was about to celebrate its 75th Birthday last October and the committee in their wisdom decided that we would provide our own entertainment – thus the request was made for Dot to play her ‘mouthie’. Unaccustomed as I was to public performance, I tried it out on a few very good friends and they advised ‘Don’t give up the day job!’ Undaunted, I decided that we would form our own orchestra (largely to drown out the mouth organ). We have very few musicians in our Rural but one guitar player, one keyboard player, and one member playing on the recorder were augmented by the rest on either kazoos or combs and paper, who together attempted to play a couple of sing-a-long tunes. The comments after the performance seem to relate mainly to the fact that we were playing in different keys (What’s a key?)

This year the request was made yet again for Dot to make music, as we were to entertain our nearest neighbours - Glass WRI - at their business meeting. I knew that my repertoire had increased – trouble was that I play all my tunes to the same standard – mainly rubbish, so I ducked the issue once again and had enormous fun at the same time. At our WRI’s birthday celebrations many of us had dressed up in 1920’s flapper style and I taught them how to do a simple version of the Charleston, so armed with this success, I started an eight strong dance team. The Rural dance team are Wendy Cassidy, Irene Christie, Evalyne Cowie, Jean Mark, Audrey Proctor, Lindsay Watt & Jill Wells.

My ‘Girls’ are wonderful and with much laughter have mastered in a very short time an Egyptian Dance. This Middle Eastern dance is a sort of cross between a Sand Dance and a Belly Dance, but we are doing the Highland version. (Egyptian Music was hard to find). We used the music for a ‘Military Two Step’, by Jim Johnston & his Traditional Scottish Dance Band. This includes tunes such as ‘The Waggle O’ the Kilt’ but obviously it’s not the kilt we are waggling. Our name – reflects our movements, ‘The Hip Bumpers’. We are almost good enough now for the London Palladium.

Audrey Proctor, one of the dance team, made us gold yokes and net yashmacs to preserve our anonymity, (it’s amazing the courage we acquired behind a mask). To complete the ensemble we added elastic to the bottom of black trousers and wore plain black tops. For our final preparation, the dancing girls also learned to do a hand jive, just in case we were asked to do an encore. The night of the performance arrived and the Dancing Girls were great, their enjoyment and enthusiasm was obvious. We finished with the Glass WRI members joining in the Hand Jive followed by the Hokey Cokey. The sight of all the laughing, smiling faces dancing & singing along with the team was wonderful to see. Who says that the SWRI is just about making cakes & knitting?

Meantime I am still a non-smoker and I’ll keep practicing on my Harmonica and who knows one day I might be good enough to entertain without emptying the hall.

Dot Bremner
Botriphnie WRI