Teenage kicks are not just for teenagers ... so I got my groove on
IWAS at our friend Diarmuid’s 60th birthday in a pub in Sligo dancing to Sister Sledge. The last time I danced to We Are Family was with my sons in the kitchen of our new house.
The open plan has so much potential for mid-afternoon ‘joy’ dancing. When I say ‘we’, of course, I mean, ‘me’. My sons find the idea of their mother dancing heinous. ‘You’re too old to dance,’ said the eight-year-old, cautioning, ‘you could hurt yourself.’ The Teen laughed, briefly, before shaking his head in abject disbelief at the sheer indignity of having me as a mother. Their father wasn’t there. Dancing is something that should happen when you are very, very drunk at a party. Never in the house. Ever. Disco dancing in the kitchen is like letting wind in mass. It’s just not on. So, when offered a legitimate opportunity to dance, I tend to go a bit mad.
Diarmuid Delargy is a rather wellknown artist and one of our Sligo gang of friends — who are, almost without exception, artists, writers and teachers. Some of us both. Diarmuid — 60? Really? It just seems so, well, old. I was doing my trademark ‘scoop’ move to the left when I nearly banged into my mother’s favourite writer; a national treasure who was wearing Yeats specs and three-piece tweed.
What’s he doing here, I thought? Then I remembered it wasn’t 1978 and I wasn’t in the youth club disco surrounded by 15-year-old bikers. It was 2017 and I was a middle-aged woman in a pair of comfortable ankle boots and a black ‘going out’ dress throwing ludicrous shapes in the back bar of a pub. I went off the idea of myself and, defeated, sloped to the ‘ladies’. I made a conscious decision to give up recreationally studying myself in mirrors at 50, so aside from the practical necessity of daily maintenance make-up, I try to avoid them. However, pub bathrooms on a night out are a necessity and I found my reflection less of a disappointment than usual due to a combination of broken light bulbs and zealous make-up application.
I headed back to the dance floor just in time for New Order’s Blue Monday. Is it really the case that 1980s music is ‘retro’? It still sounds so very current to me. As the drum beat started pounding out, I remembered the last time I danced to this addictive tune was with my friend Johnny F. He was part of this bunch. I met a lot of them through him. He died a few years ago — at 50. I danced for a minute in his honour, remembering the fun we had throwing these very shapes in Dublin nightclubs together — back in the day. I remembered Johnny should be here and felt too sad to dance any more. As I get older and lose more friends, my horrified fear of death has given way to a sort of bleak resignation.
I went to the quiet corner where I’d been standing earlier and sought out my pint of water. Everyone was merry. Birthday ‘boy’ Diarmuid was standing at the edge of the floor, next to the bar. Momentarily alone, he was surveying the room with a big, daft grin on his face. ‘Sixty, hi,’ I could hear him saying in his heavy Northern accent. He was smiling from the inside out.
TEENAGE Kicks by the Undertones came on — the anthem of all arty 1980s types — and I watched as my reserved husband suddenly launched himself across the room with surprising vigour. He was joined by other, beer-fuelled comets all rushing towards the euphoric recall of youth. Soon, the dance floor was heaving with middle-aged punks. I looked on as my old man and Diarmuid threw their pointed fingers at each other shouting; ‘I wanna hold her, wanna hold her tight…’ and I thought, we may be ‘old’ but hell, we are COOL.
The artist Alice Maher was sitting across from me watching the scene unfold as well and we nodded at each other and laughed at the scene, before joining them. This was our music, our time. These are still our boys; 20 or 80, it makes no difference. Sure, some of us are already gone and nights like this remind us of them. We must never forget that we’re the lucky ones. We are still here, still alive, still dancing at 50 and 60. We will be the 80-year-old punk-generation. Teenage kicks are not just for teenagers. So I got up on the dance floor and got my groove on. ÷KATE’S new book, That Girl, launches in Easons, Ballina tomorrow, February 8, at 7.30pm. All welcome.