Saturday Night Dancing

Jeanette Harris

It was the first weekend of our family holiday, visiting friends at their remote Glenesk hill croft, reached by means of a stony track, high on the west side of that most beautiful of Angus glens.

I loved this annual holiday because one of the four children of the family was the same age as me and we shared an interest in the 1960s teenage pleasures of pop music, Honey magazine, fashion, celebrity gossip and boys, as well as the idyllic summer pursuits of lazing around, swimming in the North Esk river, roaming the hills on two rough ponies and being absent when household duties were being dished out.

On this particular Saturday our two sets of parents had gone off in the car to the Panmure Hotel in Edzell to have supper and a few drinks. We were old enough, and trusted enough, to be left on our own and the plan was that brother George would drive us to the dance and see us safe home.

We were quite fired up about the dance that night, because it was the start of the grouse shooting season and we knew that there would be an exceptional choice of dancing partners, in the form of student grouse beaters, working at the Invermark Estate.

Brother George, however, had gone off to Dundee in the afternoon in the Landrover and hadn't returned to take us to the dance. Even though we had no driving licences, we could both drive, and would quite simply have taken the Landrover ourselves - had it not been with George in Dundee!

What were we to do? There was no other vehicle. Tarfside Hall wasn't too far across the river as the crow flies, but by road, six miles down to the end of the croft road, then another six at least, up the main glen road.

We were furious with George and panic-stricken at the prospect of being the only ones to miss out on Saturday night fun. Feeling distinctly sorry for ourselves, we sat on the bench outside the croft and looked, with little interest, at the sheepdogs and ponies romping around in the field over the fence.

Then it dawned on us both at the same time! The ponies! The ponies would take us to the ball!

In record time, we saddled up, packed our dance clothes in bags and set off down to the river, where we would trot along to the metal footbridge, cross over and be at the dance in no time - easy! The ponies weren't quite so keen, however, and refused point blank to cross the bridge - they were terrified by the noise of their own hooves on the metal bridge. Undaunted and determined, we walked up the riverside and guided the ponies across a narrow crossing. It was deep, fast and cold in the middle and the ponies were right up to their withers in the water, but we neither noticed the cold, nor cared about the current. We marvelled at our audacity and were ecstatic to be going to the dance against all odds.

We laughed all the way down the road to the hall, tied the ponies up, Wild West-style round the back, changed in the toilet and went into the dance which was already in full swing and packed with raucous young folk, whose sole intention was to have a good time.

Nobody in the hall knew about our unorthodox mode of transport to the dance, and we took immense pleasure in keeping the secret to ourselves. We met up with two brilliant dancers, medical students from London up for the grouse beating and, at the end of the evening, casually asked the boys if we could offer them a lift back to their lodge at Invermark!

I'll never forget the looks on the faces of these city boys when we led them round the back of the hall to find a pair of ponies hitched up and waiting patiently for us. They agreed, I believe with some trepidation, to get on the horses and we dropped them off at the lodge. We were rather disappointed that they didn't linger and appeared to want to get inside the lodge as fast as possible.

We never saw the boys again. We arranged to meet them at the dance in Edzell on the following Saturday night, but they didn't show up. Did the mad horse-women of Glenesk frighten them off? We'll never know, but I do know that I still feel a thrill every time I recall that hilarious night in lovely Glenesk.

Jeanette Harri