Stone me, we're outta time

1:32pm Thursday 8th January 2009

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FOR more than 30 years the opening riff to the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar” has compelled my wife Ellie onto the dance floor. Her movements and gyrations are somewhat more sedate than in the early 1970’s when she could be said to have been “strutting her stuff’ but the compulsion to dance remains.

This year we decided to sample New Year in France. I have always thought the festival over-rated. I have chased the experience down the decades from pub to restaurant, party to dinner party but it never struck me as being any more significant than any other night down a pub, restaurant, dinner party or party, apart from the fact at midnight everyone kisses each other or shakes their hand. Then, after this brief and admittedly pleasant interruption, everything gets back to normal.

New Year is big in France although I have since discovered the accent is on the new year as opposed to the evening before. New Year’s Day is a big family day in rural France, similar to Thanksgiving in the USA.

Now with the benefit of closer inspection, it transpires New Year’s Eve is pretty similar to the English version but the change of venue proved refreshing. We attended our usual Friday night watering hole, a bistro run by an English couple. The majority of the customers on NYE were English although the French made up a significant proportion before the night was over.

Each couple brought some food and we purchased our drinks, talked over our respective visits to England and then celebrated the midnight chimes with a round of cheek-kissing and hand-shaking, The extra bonus was that this was celebrated an hour ahead of England, so when Big Ben finally struck midnight an hour later, the English indulged in a further round of kissing and shaking and good-wish-making, watched by the initially bemused French who then decided if there was more excuses for traditional cheek-kissing, they would not be backward in coming forward.

The soundtrack from Mama Mia seemed to register big with the 50, 40 and 30 year olds and there were outbreaks of line-dancing.

“What gets you on the floor, Ellie?” asked the bistro owner.

I advised him as to the physical efficacy of Brown Sugar and within a minute, Keef Richards’ riff was sounding out over the airwaves.

We duly took the floor but were slightly puzzled by the fact we were the only ones who felt the need to dance to the track.

Three more joined us when Honky Tonk Woman followed, but it was only with the return of Dancing Queen that the dance floor filled again.

“I suppose we are the oldest ones here,” Ellie pointed out, and I suppose we were.

It had me puzzled. The Rolling Stones aren’t exactly in the Anne Ziegler and Webster Booth museum archive category. Was it a case of being yesterday’s couple?

Then I recalled my sister-in-law had popped into HMV at High Wycombe to purchase a cd for her step-father. After browsing the racks unsuccessfully she approached a female assistant and asked if they had any Bing Crosby recordings in store.

The assistant frowned slightly and inquired: “How are you spelling that?”