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Did you all watch the 'Strictly' final last night? It was nice, wasn’t it?
What? Oh, I see. You don't think I sound like a 'Strictly' fan, do you? And of course this early in the sketch it's not entirely clear whether I'm speaking to you as a BBC Radio 4 comedy writer who frequently talks about himself in the third person, or if this is one of those times you're getting the vaguely Edwardian storyteller with a fondness for horses who think they are cats.
Since you ask me for a story about ... I'm kidding. You're getting the first one.
Anyway, if some of you were thinking just now, 'John doesn’t really seem the sort of person who cares that much about waltzing,' you are correct. On the other hand, if others of you were thinking, 'I bet there isn’t a lot to do in Dorset of a Saturday night. In winter,' you are also correct.
One thing there is a lot of in Allwyn, especially in winter, is windstorms. I don't know if we get more on average than other fictional villages in Dorset, but we do also have a lot of trees. And very little in the way of government services such as tree trimmers. (We don't have a school or a post box. Of course we don't have tree trimmers.) Put together, it means that on any given weekend there’s a one-in-ten chance the power’s been knocked out.
When that happens (or it looks like it might happen, or it's just gotten a bit boring at home), many people make their way to Gareth’s. He's the one, you may remember, who decided to keep the taps and the pumps when he purchased his half of the former pub. Relevant to this story, he also installed a backup generator about 15 years ago, and two big-screen TVs a few years after that.
Gareth mostly seems to watch football on these TVs, of course. But when the Big Storm of 2017 meant it would be at least a week before Mercy Lake’s TV was connected again, he obligingly put 'Strictly Come Dancing' on the regular rota so that she could cheer for that 'nice young magician’s assistant' she remembered from decades past.
Joy-from-the-Forge had a perfectly fine working TV, but thought watching with Mercy at Gareth’s on Saturday night might make Mercy more interested in coming to church with Joy on Sunday morning. Wasn’t there a vicar on this year as well?
Then Amit and Dan discovered they had both been forced to take dance lessons as teenagers. As they had already separately discovered that their partners had very little interest in hearing about this, they began to meet up every week to commiserate while enjoying a couple of Gareth's many tasty raffle tickets.
By the time I moved to Allwyn, there were at least ten regulars every Saturday night, with more making their way to Gareth’s when it got later in the series or when the tabloids had run some particularly interesting photos of that year's cast.
Jim hosted the table for people interested in the dancing itself, which was another way of saying the people who enjoyed grumbling about footwork and occasionally shouting at a male celebrity to 'lift their upper arm goddammit.' Jim had learnt foxtrot in school, back before there was colour TV and when partner dancing seemed like it might be a useful life skill. Dan and Amit usually joined Jim, as did Shona. Shona had not been forced to take dance lessons when she was younger, but she enjoyed watching YouTube clips of people demonstrating the fleckerl.
Lindsay had been forced to take dance lessons (the identity of the person who did the forcing will not surprise you) but had blotted out all associated knowledge deliberately. Instead, she sat with Melody and Vicky and chatted about the costumes and the music. Joy either sat with them or with Jen and Mercy, depending on who each were backing in that particular series.
This year, Joy and Mercy had agreed to strategically block vote for their respective favorites, and so had been sitting together all series and taking turns treating each other to raffle tickets. Jen, Mercy's daughter-in-law, did not really care about the voting, but was happy to have an excuse for a night off the farm. She always lent Mercy her phone (and Ben's when he left it lying around) so that Mercy could ensure all the Lake family votes were cast for the appropriate people.
Miriam also came every week. She had been an accountant before retiring, and so kindly kept track of everyone’s favorites and their predictions for who would be the next to be voted out. If anyone had thought to ask her why she brought a chalkboard with listed odds on it to Gareth's, she would have told them that she just “enjoyed figuring out the maths, dear.”
Stephen was of course, as always, with her.
So yes, add 'bookmaker' to 'speakeasy' and 'cakes' on the list of businesses that Allwyn can support. (I've only been here a little over a year, so at this rate I fully expect one day soon I will learn that my neighbor Vicky is secretly running a poker den.)
This series of 'Strictly' was not a particularly profitable year for the chalkboard. I, you will not be astonished to learn, made an early bet on the middle-aged comedian who always pops up on panel shows, and most of the room likewise supported celebrities who made it nearly or all the way to the end.
One exception was Dan, who claimed to be supporting the former footballer. If by supporting one meant gleefully voting for the celebrity who most looked like they would rather be doing anything else, anyway. Dan did mean that, so that was fine.
Joy split her early votes between the opera singer and the soap star. She jumped on the comedian bandwagon fairly early on, but still enjoyed being annoyed when the soap star went out early. Mercy had been a fan of the sitcom the TV actress had starred on, and enjoyed watching her and her celebrity friends in the studio audience. Both agreed that the four celebrities who made it to the final were all very good for once, even the blonde woman whose name they could never remember.
Jim supported the farmer, of course. (Jim did know that he'd also been in a singing group once, but felt that was less relevant.) He nodded in approval when they led off the final with a Viennese waltz. That was proper dancing, that was.
He didn't mind too much when the farmer lost, though. It was true that the comedian was not the best dancer. But, as Jim wrote in his busy book that evening, 'Strictly' wasn't really all about dancing, was it? Opinion: His.