TAP!

(In my dreams this will be me and D after I teach him my new skills!)

Ever since I was tiny I have wanted to learn to tap dance. Being allowed to stomp and clip-clop around to jazzy music has always appealed to me (I hope my dancing vocabulary will mature along with my tapping skills). I have also always been too scared to go to clubs on my own. None of my childhood friends wanted to join me for tap classes, so I never went myself. This fear of going solo meant that I probably missed out on a lot of great experiences over the years- I could be a tap dancing legend like Vera-Ellen (I hope the name is a lucky charm!) by now if I had only been braver.

Rather than become easier as I got older and more confident, it seemed harder to overcome this psychological barrier when I first moved to Edinburgh and was feeling pressure to create a wonderful life after university. Because of this I was surprised and quite proud to find myself walking to my new tap class last week having told myself that I was going to make no excuses and stop allowing my nerves to get in the way of having a brilliant time!

It helped that it was a new course so I was pretty sure there would be other beginners there and that I had been to the dance school beforehand to pick up my brand spanking new tap shoes! The people were really friendly and the place was small with hardly any intimidating ‘dance girls’ running around in ballet shoes and Pineapple gear! When I arrived I was told to go downstairs to studio two and, on seeing a huddle of girls my age looking nervous and a bit awkward, I immediately knew it was going to be ok. The class was really challenging (in a good way) and the teacher a lot of fun. I did have a moment of feeling a bit put out that I was not going to be spotted as the virtuoso that I never realised I was until given the chance to tap to Michael Bublé songs (I got rather confused when we had to put all that we had learnt together and the steps added up to more than three!) but soon put my silly school girl neuroses to one side and just enjoyed myself.

The feeling of facing up to a long-held fear and then coming out of it feeling full of energy and talking to a handful of nice people was really uplifting. Just by doing one thing like this a week I feel like my life in Edinburgh is becoming fuller and more rounded. But now I also feel inspired to pack in more things and have joined the library and the gym, will be attending a bloggers' book club next month and have been out with my new friends at work.

I feel satisfied when I realise that I have independently created the life that I am living now- I found my job, I signed up to all of these different activities and I am making friends and becoming part of the community. Maybe this is how it feels to be an adult! As Penny Lane says in Almost Famous; ‘It’s all happening!’