Oh no Craig has challenged me to do some more dancing. This time he wants to up the stakes and take it to a whole new level. Craig is a mate at work who constantly gets me into dance-floor related high jinks. Every year at the Christmas party he goads me into joining in with some insane 80’s themed dance off, usually with neither of us winning. His urge to dance with me started nearly 10 years ago when he learnt that I could Caterpillar and do a fair Robot to boot. The Robot dance is Craig’s passion, he really loves it. Add a little body popping into the mix for good measure and he will pass the Electric Boogaloo along the chain all night without ever tiring.
I can’t deny it; this is my dance era too. I’m pretty adept at catching the electric from him and letting it pass across me before zapping it along to the person next to me who usually just mouths something unprintable and turns around. Out of the whole of our office I believe Craig and I are by far the best Robot dancers to hit the floor and our body popping is second to none too.
The problem is that we are also the only people who care. No matter how hard we try to synchronise our Boogaloo we can never encourage anyone else to join in. A few years back there was a walkway joining the bar to the main dance area and we were just about to head along it back to join the others when, as one we decided to Robot along it instead of walking. For some reason both of us felt quite strongly that this would impress anyone who walked by in the other direction and so we both put our hearts and souls into it. I can assure you that if Arnie had seen us that night we would have been snapped up quick and he would have saved a fortune in special effects for Terminator 3. We juddered and slid along the walkway, looking more realistic than C3PO or Robocop, absolute concentration and determination on our faces. Men and women walked past, but instead of the praise, awe and love that we should by rights have been awarded, we got nothing but apathy and sorrow. I distinctly heard one girl tell her friend, “It’s great that that they let them come to these dos isn’t it instead of locking them up like in the olden days?”
When we discovered that we could both Caterpillar the stakes were raised still further. The problem that we have not yet been able to overcome is the complete lack of compatibility in our style. Craig can only Caterpillar moving forwards whilst I can only Caterpillar going backwards. Neither of us have the skills or the timing to be able to overcome this so it always ends up being messy. Time and time again we have ruined an otherwise lovely evening for our colleagues by crashing into each other and several innocent bystanders, tearing posh frocks or hired tuxedos. No amount of quick thinking booty shaking or moon-walking being good enough to calm the crowds down.
Now Craig has dropped another bombshell on me, he wants us to turn professional. We are to start training now, start working on our Caterpillar timing and tweaking our Robot until it is inch perfect. He wants us to audition for next years Britain’s Got Talent!
Craig truly believes that we can compete at that level, to take on Diversity and stop the singers before they even pick up the microphone. Personally I’m not so sure; I think that Simon would buzz us before we so much as whipped off our overcoats to reveal our silver body paint. I think that Piers would say that if we could at least Caterpillar in the same direction we might be worth watching. Amanda would no doubt slip me her phone number whilst declaring that she loved the original Stavros Flately and thinks our tribute act is pretty good as well; one solitary ‘yes’ would not be enough however, so it would be back to the day job for Craig and a life of running from the Paparazzi for Amanda and I. I’m not sure I can handle all that so I think I’m going to have to turn Craig down on this one, although I’m weaker than a soggy Digestive - so I’ll keep you posted!
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