It’s not dancing

 What have this government got against the arts?

I know that tough decisions have to be made and that if you are going to allow indoor mixing and the cases are rising in a country with a very poorly funded healthcare system then you can’t allow everyone to mix at once. I appreciate that, given the choice between upsetting football fans and theatregoers, it would probably be wise to choose to upset the latter. However, wouldn’t it just be so much more refreshing if there was honesty to it? It’s just bonkers that they are still insisting that arts based events are more dangerous than sports or business based activities.

There are still schools where they won’t let kids sing because they believe it’s unsafe. The act of having lots of people together is unsafe, singing is the same as talking (according to the research) but in reducing thing they’ve made the arts the demon.

For example, hundreds of football fans in an indoor space, singing loudly, proudly and badly is great for our national pride but the idea of a choir of 39 singing in a huge school hall with all the windows open, sitting on their own chair, facing in the same direction is unsafe is still being pushed.

These ideas will have long term damage. 

Boris made his announcement with sparkling clarity and the apology for sieve like borders we have all been hoping for (*heavy sarcasm*if you were confused).

“We will hold off step four openings until July the 29th except for weddings. Err two thirds of adults aged err err err all adults in the company will have had err will have had two doses by the end of errrm by  July by July the errrm July the 19th. We will errm have errr all er adults everybody over by July the 19th. Terminal date. Errm. There you go.”

He said that weddings can go ahead with more than thirty people providing social distancing is observed.

How? Now you may kiss the bride. Oh no sorry, just wave at her from across the room, unless you already live together. I pity the venues that have to enforce social distancing at weddings. It’s just not going to be fun. Then the details started to emerge and eating food spat on by disgruntled waiting staff is safe  and drinking enough alcohol to make you loose all sense of reason is still perfectly fine but dancing isn’t. It’s the dancing that will kill you lads. Whatever you do don’t dance. Inside dancing is banned, categorically. Outside dancing is not advised even though the Prime Minister certainly had dancing at his wedding, music helpfully provided by a band called On the Fiddle (or something similar).

No first dances. No carrying the bride and groom over your heads and stamping on a glass. No pinning money to the bride’s dress dance. All wedding cultures, no matter what religion have dancing as part of the ritual. It’s an artistic expression of love.

There I go. That’s the problem. It’s the art that’s dangerous. We know that because when a journalist asked about Lloyd-Webber’s insistence that he was going to break the law we were told not to worry about that because Cinderella was business not art and so would be allowed to go ahead as a ‘pilot project’. 

I have a solution, though. The answer is obvious. Don’t have dancing, have a workout. I’m sure you could hire a super skinny fitness queen to stand at the front in a leotard. That’ll be fine.

Green Goddess available for weddings (not really)