I'm in the mood for dancing

Last night I went, with the Boy and about 20 friends, the the yacht club ball. It sounds far grander than it is. If the truth be known, I'm not much of a fan. The times I have gone I tend to spend most of the evening wandering around wondering where the party is. If it were not for my fabulous friends making it great fun (and couldn't we do that more cheaply in a nightclub somewhere?) I probably wouldn't bother to go. However, the Boy decided that we needed to be more sociable this year, due to impending death of our social life, so tickets were bought.

Here came my first challenge. As a girlfriend (who I dragon boated with yesterday) said, I am still in a state of semi denial about the Bump, so it came as no surprise that I ended up at 6pm last night looking at my wardrobe while various naughty four letter words ran through my head. Being in HK, I am blessed with a slightly larger number of party frocks than I was in the UK, but none are designed to accomodate an extra few kilos of bump stuck on my front. However many times I skimmed through the wardrobe, nothing seemed to get any bigger, however hard I willed it. Until, wonder of wonders, I came across a very stretchy dress I bought in a dingy shop in Oxford about 12 years ago for a cocktail party when still an impoverished student. It is a chong sam in design, but made from lovely dark blue unfeasibly stretchy material. It worked like a dream, except that heavily pregnant women probably shouldn't wear dresses with splits up to the thigh on each side, that hug every curve (leading to a comment from a drunken kilt-wearing twit later that I had "Nice bumps, all three of them").

Then came the choice for shoes. Of course I am supposed to wear flat shoes blah blah blah. So I went for 6 inch heels with a 1 inch platform Kors hooker shoes (they do what they say on the tin). I looked a lot like a lady of the night in Saigon circa 1920, except bigger.

The ball itself was the first time the Bump had been taken dancing. I love dancing, I do it exceptionally badly, but love it. However, because of my uncoordinated gait, I tend to have to get very drunk to dance. Hence I have not done it for 7 months. I took to the floor with a few rowing friends, tottering in my very high heels. A cover band playing Nickelback was probably, with hindsight, not the easiest place to start. A bit of gentle Sinatra while being supported by the Boy may have been better, but never being one to pass up a challenge I strode purposefully onto the dance floor.

To find my centre of gravity has changed, my muscles now wobble, and shoes that were hard to dance in before I was pregnant turned into torture instruments. A couple of my friends with whom I was dancing also attended the same pole dancing classes I did, so we tried our best "Pamela" struts and dips, but however hard I tried I had about as much coordination as, well, the Boy does. But, it was the ball, and everyone was too drunk to remember so I wobbled (only had to be caught once) through bad cover versions of the Stones, U2 and other soft rock music. The bump kicked along, and seems to like loud music, and I had a brilliant time.

And today I am the only person I know who went who doesn't have a hangover. There are some benefits to the Bump!