Girls on Film

How do you tend to spend Tuesday nights? My Tuesday nights have had a variety of commitments over the decades. In the mid-1990s, Tuesday was Student Nite at Ziggys nightclub in York (which is just as crap as the name suggests. One memorable night my best female friend and I were stood with a male friend, Dave, at the bar. A random bloke in a shiny shirt walked up and pointing at we two girls whilst addressing my mate Dave he inquired: 'they both with you?', when Dave answered in the affirmative Shiny-shirt-man responded, 'can I have one?' as if universal female suffrage had never occurred). For a while in the early noughties Tuesdays were gym nights and after I became a teacher they were stick kid in bed, work until midnight, go to sleep exhausted nights (c.ref Sunday to Thursday).

Now Tuesdays are far, far, far more wonderful than I can ever convey. Tuesdays are Curry Night (capitals ungrammatical but intentional). On Curry Night my friend comes over and we eat curry and discuss the state of the education system. This is a euphemism for thoroughly and systematically slagging off one particular school. However, last night we undertook some wonderful pastimes:

(1) planning out which songs we would dance to if we got on to Strictly Come Dancing. My answer to every single dance was a Duran Duran classic (i.e. Argentinian Tango to 'Girls on Film'. But apparently the tempo would be wrong). I worked through the Duran back catalogue and failed miserably to show any knowledge of dance whatsoever. I then chose 'Something Changed' by Pulp which was the 'first dance' song at my wedding. This led to,

(2) digging out my wedding video, heckling my ex and cheering myself. I have to say - and anyone reading this who attended might agree - I did look bloody gorgeous that day. Was that really my body? The weird thing about looking at the wedding video was I didn't feel any sort of nostalgia or regret for my marriage. I did get a little sniffly watching the wedding speech I gave but the emotion was solely about my Granddad who had died before the wedding. I'm surprised at how it isn't raw and difficult to watch my wedding video but it just shows how far I've come.

So on Curry Night I looked at girls on film from two angles. The first, the Duran early '80s classic and the second, myself on my wedding video. One is an outdated curio from a time long gone. And the other is a Duran Duran song.

Things taught to me by sixth formers

Last night I went to the Sixth form ball. This is what I have learnt from the experience:

1) Don't have any photos taken in profile. Not good.
2) Don't have any photos taken straight on. Worse.
3) Don't have photos taken with 18 year olds. You will look like something Hans Christian Andersson rejected from a witch fairytale as just too disturbing.
4) Don't drink lots of wine and gin and then hand your camera to sixth formers and ask them to take pictures of you together. There are some things about yourself you should never see should you wish to retain your sanity.
5) Everyone else in the world, except me, knows how to do a line dance thingummy dance to Whigfield's 'Saturday Night'. And that 'Cha-cha-step' nonsense. This makes me proud.
6) All DJs are tossers. Particularly bald ones from Garforth.
7) It's probably not dignified to emote through 'Time of my life' from Dirt Dancing if you want to retain any shred of dignity.
8) The idea of profiteroles is significantly more attractive than the reality of profiteroles.
9) Duran Duran are godlike genius. 'Girls on Film' attracted lots of dancers. Nice work.
10) Ignore any shite you hear about kids today. The ones I know are simply gorgeous. Particularly when stood next to women twice their age....