Last updated 05:33, Friday, 13 June 2008

He was asking, so now they’re dancing. Publicly, competitively and in high-heeled gold shoes, no less, they’ll soon be twirling, swirling and quick-stepping for all they’re worth. Even backwards, I’m told... now, that is an accomplishment.

On a big Fred and Ginger night of high romance and 1,000 stars – otherwise known as the charity dance-off – Rosehill’s Shepherd’s Inn will be like Blackpool’s Tower Ballroom without the Wurlitzer and hand-stitched sequins.

What a spectacle. Eyeliner and support knickers are at the ready. Reginald Dixon grows anxiously more impatient in his grave as we speak. The great days of proper dance are to be revived. Dancing like your mum and dad when they were juvenile delinquents. Arms around each other and everything – how risque is that?

Fragrant ladies will glide like swans in floaty frocks; gallant gents in shiny shoes will steer them, inspire them, make them appear lighter than duck down. Carol Smillie will be there too – she having perfected all ballroom moves artfully for telly – and all for a good cause. How utterly Cumbrian.

Eden Valley Hospice’s Strictly Dine and Dance event, though not due to happen until October, captured imaginations very early. Colin Powell, head of fundraising at the hospice, threw out his invitations to take to the floor and suddenly the Ritzy thing was set in diary tablets of stone. A fixed calendar date of gossamer glamour – with a six course dinner. That really is Cumbrian, since nothing ever happens here without it involving a good feed.

We have to admit to special interest in Cumbria’s strictly-come-ballroom-dance-fever revival here in this neck of Newspaper House. Two of our own are to show shapely ankles at the razzle-dazzle hospice do. Twinkle-toes both, Pam and Ann are already in exhausting light-fantastic rehearsals... oh and David says he’ll be flashing a shapely something or other too. Tickets are selling fast on his promise of same. Remarkable, really. We’re abuzz with anticipation – all of us. Never mind Euro football; this is the real deal.

Ashamed to say, I was also invited to enter a waltz or one of my infamous 3am slow shuffles into the competition. But exposing a swollen ankle in such esteemed, lithe, slender-thighed company seemed excessively daunting. I’m too clumsy to attempt a Viennese whirl, anyway. Yes, that was me you saw stumbling off the pavement at Craw Hall – but it was all OK in the end. Only a teeny bone broken.

So, on the starry night in question I shall be a wallflower, supporting Pam, Ann – oh, go on then; David too – in their glorious efforts to help the terminally and life-threateningly ill at the hospice... and doing it beautifully.

There doesn’t seem to be a single moment allowed to pass unfilled anywhere in Cumbria – at least such is the impression of an erstwhile bone idle Yorkshire woman.

Singing, scarecrow building, cycling, walking, running, climbing, squirrel-trapping, curlew -counting, post office closure-protesting, airport banner-carrying, local, regional and national politics, charity dining and auctioning, sausage promoting and hog-roasting. Gathering for film clubs and readers’ groups, sports and cookery, real ale appreciation and wine tasting, painting and photography, martial arts and cake tin decoration. Biscuit Clubs, farmers’ markets and WIs... good grief, Cumbria even gurns for the Queen! Does nobody ever waste a moment just lying down?

“Hmm – that’s probably because there’s nothing much to do up there.” What?

This poke in the eye from a woman known to drive from Leeds to Ilkley to sit in her car and watch a windfarm. Now, that’s what I call nothing to do.

“Be fair,” she moaned. “I do stop for tea and carrot cake on the way home.”

Nothing much to do. No truer words were ever uttered in confirmation of the state of mind sunk in chronic lack of imagination – and always mistaken for boredom. We most often hear it from hormonal youngsters looking for life in a lager can. But she, being closer to 60 than 16, has no excuse.

“And then there’s dancing – like ‘Strictly’ but with merciful exception of Bruce Forsyth.”

“You already said.”

“Pam and Ann are Ginger Rogers and Rita Hayworth. They do everything Fred used to do but do it backwards.”

“Right. They’ll have plenty of time there for practice, I suppose.”

True enough – though they have both had to eat deeply into precious hours set aside for windfarm watching. Massive sacrifice, that one.

There’s a great deal to be thankful for here – Pam, Ann, Ms Smillie, dining, dancing, imagination and swollen ankles among them. But on reflection, perhaps there is one aspect of that other lady’s life I might, on occasion, be tempted to envy.

It would be lovely – simply wonderful, in fact – to have to drive all the way to Ilkley before I could see a windfarm.