Life, the Universe and Everything

 In normal years,  this festival offers 3-4 ceilidhs on the greenfield site as well as a "Day of Dance" featuring Contra, etc. at a venue in the town. This year, the "Day of Dance" was cancelled and there were just two ceilidhs. The organisers were a little coy about exactly what was on offer saying, "Not comfortable dancing in a crowd? Don’t worry! The evenings will start out as an upbeat standing concert and with callers on hand" and the programme  billed the ceilidhs as  "An evening with" followed by the name of the band. The Friday event did start with an hour of concert but the Saturday was a dance from the start. Concessions to Covid included: A large container of hand sanitiser near the entrance A last minute email from the festival "Please take a Lateral Flow Test within 24 hours before your expected arrival at the site.". This caused some confusion on the Facebook page as people tried to establish what proof they'd need. Th...

 In normal times, this is a series of monthly events attracting over 100 dancers. This was a "restart" event and the intention is that there will be another dance in October and presumably monthly thereafter. Differences from normal included: A different hall with around a quarter of the floor area of the usual spaces. I asked the organiser if this was deliberate but she said not. .The usual spaces were not available. There were nearly always 32 dancers on the floor and no more than 40. This was low compared to the usual 100+ but fitted the hall well. The large number of students normally seen were absent but this is probably because it's still the vacation. It was my impression that the proportion of the very oldest dancers was less and the that the middle-aged were more prominent. I saw 3 masks being worn by 20-somethings Everyone danced normally but perhaps with a little more enthusiasm and joy than normal.