The Strange World of Axel Fendersson

‘Tis the turning of the year, and hopes are all renewed
Mind you, we said the same last year and nothing much ensued.

That rhyme appears on the Kipper Family album The Ever-Decreasing Circle. I’ve always liked it and been prone to trotting it out at around this time as it appeals to the more cynical side of my sense of humour. I thought of it again this afternoon, but was struck by just how completely inappropriate it is this year. Twelve months ago, I was filled with hope for the following year. Much ensued.

Dancing has, of course, been the biggest thing in my life this year. At the start of the year, I was already hooked, but was still dancing only once a week and had only just been to my first social dance. Since then, it has expanded greatly. I will now spend anywhere between three and seven nights a week dancing. I now have an active social life and many new friends. Since September, in addition to Modern Jive, I’ve been learning Lindy Hop and am enjoying it so far. It’s more difficult than jive, but that’s no bad thing; I enjoy the additional challenge.

All of which would be difficult were it not for the other success I have enjoyed this year, which was finally finding a job. I worked in one temporary job in February and March and then moved into my current job at the beginning of April. This was also temporary to begin with, but has been permanent since August. I won’t pretend that it’s the best fun in the world. It can, at times, be quite boring. It’s also only 30 hours a week, which does leave me with free afternoons, but doesn’t leave me with much money. As long as I’m living at home and paying what is really only a nominal contribution towards my keep, the money I earn is quite sufficient for my needs at the moment. But eventually I am going to need more money than I’m getting at the moment. I also don’t think my job is ever going to be very secure; it’s a tiny company and so too vulnerable to ups and downs in the work we’re getting. So in the next few weeks I’m going to start looking around to see if I can find something else. But I can now do that from the point of view of someone who has been at his job for 9 months and doesn’t need a new job right now. I can pick and choose and look for a job that I actually like rather than having to just take anything, and if I don’t find anything straight away then it won’t matter that much because I’m OK as I am for now anyway.

Of course, working most days and dancing most evenings has meant that my other interests have taken something of a back seat this year. I’ve painted a total of one model this year, which I completed in three sessions, two of which were in the spring (I think) and the third of which I then didn’t get around to until Boxing Day.

Roleplaying did pick up back in the summer, as I managed to get together a regular gaming group with a weekly session that was going well until I dropped out to go and learn Lindy Hop that evening instead. I have only managed the occasional game since. It may yet be possible to get a new regular session going, possibly only every fortnight, but possibly not.

I’ve been a bit neglectful of music, too. I’m still playing for morris and still often attend the monthly sessions in Ducklington, but other than that I haven’t really done very much. I’m sure it’s something I’ll come back to doing more of in future, but right now it’s a lower priority than before.

At the beginning of the year, things were still a mess, but they had at least started to move in the right direction. Twelve months on and I am happier than I have been for a long time. There is still much to be done. I still have anxieties to face down. There are still many things in my life that I need to improve or correct. But not only is life still moving very much in the right direction, but right now I’m enjoying the ride.

2010, when this long-overdue turnaround began, started and ended with a barbecue. 2011 did not begin particularly auspiciously, but concluded with Two Minutes to Midnight playing at 2358 (seriously, how have we not done that before?). I feel that this bodes well for 2012. Maintaining this trajectory may not be easy; there will be interesting challenges ahead. But I am ready to meet them.

Oh, and to top it all off, I currently have less in common with this guy than I used to.

Since I started dancing, I’ve attended several events at which Black Tie is, although not compulsory, quite commonplace. After the first of these, at which I dressed informally, I decided to adopt this mode of dress myself at future events.

I was aware at that time that Black Tie was a fairly precisely defined dress code, but only roughly knew what it entailed, so the first step was to educate myself on exactly what was required. Many websites contained useful information, but none covered the subject in anything like as much depth as the appropriately named Black Tie Guide, which described in great detail not only the on-paper requirements of the dress code, but also details of style, etiquette, history and more.

Armed with this information, I then set about acquiring my own dinner suit. I started by getting an outfit that, although fairly cheap, followed the rules correctly and looked pretty good for the money I’d spent on it. I wore this to the next event and thought myself fairly dapper. A couple of minor upgrades followed shortly afterwards (a nicer cummerbund, better shoes). But although it didn’t look bad, there were still a few issues I had with it. The fit wasn’t perfect. The trousers were a little bit tight and the waist was a little bit on the low side. And the sleeves of the jacket had a strange habit of riding up my arms so that they appeared far too short.

Then, while looking for something else, I came upon an evening waistcoat at The Ballroom in Oxford. A proper low-cut evening waistcoat with a full back. Perfect fit. £12. So I bought it.

But now I had a problem. With a waistcoat, the low waist of my trousers was potentially a problem. Although all was well when everything was on straight, the waistcoat only needed to ride up slightly or the trousers slip down a little and I would start showing shirt between the two. Also, the waistcoat was clearly made from a better material than the cheap wool/polyester blend that the jacket and trousers were cut from, making them look shabbier in comparison.

So I upgraded, buying vintage jacket & trousers from Savvy Row. The trousers were a perfect fit (and are in all respects the most wonderful pair of trousers I have ever worn), but the jacket needed a little adjustment. So now I have a superb dinner suit in lovely barathea wool, which I wore for the first time in its entirety to Ceroc‘s ‘Spinderella’ ball.

And while I was there, I noticed something. Most guys nowadays do black tie really badly. In fact, there was not a man there wearing black tie with whose outfit I could not find fault*.

In a distinguished few cases, the faults were minor; wearing waistcoats that were high-cut like those worn with three-piece suits, for example. Sure, a proper low-cut evening waistcoat would have looked better, but it isn’t strictly wrong and does still look pretty good. Far more common were those who wore no waist coverings at all, or, even worse, wore waistcoats that failed to reach the waistbands of their trousers. One particularly strange example was the double-breasted jacket (which would not normally require a separate waist covering) that was worn undone with a cummerbund for a particularly odd effect. Other common faults were ugly jackets (of which step collars were among the less offensive features), belts and bad shirts, particularly wing-collar shirts with narrow collars and tiny, pathetic-looking wings.

The strange thing being that none of this would have particularly registered with me before. It’s not that I would have thought it looked good or anything. I just wouldn’t have paid any attention at all. But somehow, in researching and learning how to look good in Black Tie myself, I have now made myself aware of how bad it can look when the mistakes I have learned to avoid are made by other people.

*I have to include myself in that as well, unfortunately. My jacket has grosgrain facings on the lapels, which means that my satin bow tie no longer fits. Also, the fabric on my waistcoat doesn’t quite match that of my jacket and trousers, although it requires careful inspection to spot this. In my defence, I believe these are comparatively minor offences compared with many, and I intend to rectify the former. Grosgrain bow ties are prohibitively expensive, but apparently silk barathea is an acceptable alternative (although it doesn’t have the same pattern, the textured weave gives it a similarly dull finish), so I have ordered one. The waistcoat is nice enough in all other respects that I think I can get away with ignoring the slightly different weave on the fabric.

Back in 2006, when Tim Healey first put together Melomania to play at Oxford Folk Festival, I was given an old second-hand tailcoat to wear as part of the costume. At the time, I thought it was quite a nice garment, but only really in the sense that a bit of old-fashioned formal-wear had a costumey charm. I wore it for Melomania and later took to wearing it when playing for the morris as well. I have also worn it occasionally in other contexts as well, but only ever as costume. I never really treated it with very much respect; it was just something that was occasionally fun to put on.

I haven’t worn it for a while. When we did Melomania at Cornbury this year I wore my morning coat instead, since it seemed more appropriate to a daytime event anyway. But this afternoon, I dug it out and had a look at it, and was pleasantly surprised by what a superb garment it actually is.

For starters, the fabric is lovely. It’s a really smooth, fine wool and there’s a subtle herringbone pattern to the weave that looks really nice. The lapels are faced in a nice grosgrain silk. And it’s in great condition, too; there’s a slight rip to the seam at the top of the vent, but that should be easy enough to repair and is completely invisible from the outside. Other than that it doesn’t have any real faults at all.

I was at least partly aware of these aspects already. But I discovered two more things about it this afternoon that I wasn’t aware of before. Firstly, it has working cuff buttons. I don’t actually know how common this feature is on tailcoats. Probably more so than on lounge jackets but I don’t think it’s something to be taken for granted even here.

Perhaps most interestingly, I found a label inside the pocket. It has the name of the tailor embroidered on it (Maurice Burnard Ltd. of Birmingham), and printed below that is “D.C.Y.HIGGS, ESQ. 5.12.52″. Which makes this tailcoat a little over twice as old as I am.

In most respects it’s not a bad fit, either. Slightly long in the arms, but not badly so. But it’s just a little bit short. I tried it on with my evening waistcoat and there’s easily 2cm between the bottom of the coat and the waistcoat. So while it’s fine for use as costume, it wouldn’t be quite right to use as part of a ‘proper’ white-tie ensemble.

Next week I’m going to see a tailor to enquire about getting a dinner jacket adjusted to fit. While I’m there, I’ll also ask whether it would be possible to have this tailcoat modified, too. I suspect not or, if it is possible, it would be too expensive to be worth it. But if that’s the case it’ll be a real shame, as it’s a wonderful garment.

As of last Thursday evening it has been a whole year since I first went along to Jive+ in Witney to try a free evening’s dancing. Somehow it seems simultaneously to have been very recent and a long, long time ago. On the one hand, dancing still has a vast amount of novelty value for me. It still very much has the feeling of an exciting new discovery, thrilling merely by virtue of the fact it wasn’t there before. And I still vividly remember that evening when I first started, awkward and terrified and with very little idea of what to expect. In fact, in a way that first evening seems a more recent memory than other evenings after I had been going for a while.

At the same time, I have come so very far in the past year. Indeed, I am a noticeably better dancer than I was even two or three months ago. I have been a taxi dancer for approximately half the time I have been dancing, and am in a position to give well-thought-out opinions in taxi meetings on which variations of moves should be taught in lessons (that doesn’t men I’m necessarily right, but at least what I’m arguing isn’t uninformed nonsense). Although there is still vast room for improvement and I am in no danger of running out of things to learn and develop for a long time yet, I have got to the point where I am overall a pretty good dancer.

The latest development is that I have begun teaching the beginners’ review sessions that take place at the same time as the intermediate lessons. I taught my first review class last month and it was something of a baptism of fire: a group of nineteen people, all of whom were complete beginners who had only started that week, and some of whom were quite boisterous. Still, I think it went well overall. I’ve taught another session since, with a much more manageable ten people.

My life in general has changed over the past year, too. I am a happier and more confident person than I was twelve months ago. Although there have been other successes in the past year (most notably passing my driving test and getting a job), dancing has probably been the biggest contributing factor to that. I had been in a fairly rotten state for a few years, drifting into loneliness, despair and depression. Now I spend multiple evenings a week doing well at something that I love, meeting and interacting with people. There’s a lot still wrong with my situation and not all of it will be easy to change. But things are looking up in a way that they hadn’t been for a long time, and I’m doing OK for the moment.

Well, there goes another rite of passage; I have now had my first car accident.

I attended a dance workshop in Abingdon yesterday afternoon, which was very good, and was planning on attending the freestyle in the evening. However, I had a couple of hours between the two, so I decided to drive home to have a shower and some dinner before going back to Abingdon for the freestyle.

But I never made it to the freestyle, as while driving through Wooton I momentarily took my eyes off the road and so clipped the corner of the car against a wall, rendering it undriveable.

I wasn’t hurt, no other vehicles were involved, and the damage to anything besides the car was fairly minimal. And the damage should be covered by the insurance; my father thinks that the damage probably isn’t quite enough to write the car off. So as accidents go, it could have been much worse. And I gather that most people get into an accident at some point in their first year or so of driving, so I guess this is just something I have to learn from and move on.

But what is frustrating is how much it restricts what I can do. I don’t know whether I’ll make it to Ceroc tomorrow or the following Monday. Jive+ in Banbury on Tuesday is very unlikely. The Jive+ freestyle on Friday will be difficult, although I’m hoping I can still get to that (at least I don’t have to get up the day afterwards, so it matters less that relying on buses could mean that I get home considerably later than I otherwise would). Jive Temptation‘s advanced lesson on the 29th might well be out as well (I’ve never been to that before, so I don’t know how great a loss that is), depending on how long it takes before the car is fixed.

In fact, possibly the greatest shock is to be reminded of how completely dependent I have become on driving so quickly after passing my test.

I’m pretty sure that I ought to hate Michael Bublé. I deeply loathe the old crooners he apes; surely I should equally despise their upstart modern imitator? And yet, I can muster nothing more than indifference for him.

Almost as puzzling is the fact I don’t hate what I’ve heard of the new Duran Duran album, which was playing quite a lot on Radio 2 at work recently. Historically, I can’t abide Duran Duran (or, in fact, any New Romantic music). But actually, what they’ve played sounds to me like vaguely enjoyable electro-pop. I’m not about to rush out and buy the record or anything, but I don’t mind hearing it on the radio.

Very strange.

Until Christmas, I wasn’t really doing very much. I went out to Morris practice on Tuesday evening and Jive+ on Wednesday, and that was about it. Other than that, I was doing pretty much nothing all week.

And now, all of a sudden, I am busy all the time.

Firstly, I am now busy in the day-time. Initially, this was because the Job Centre had sent me on a New Deal course with A4E in Oxford. I have since managed to get out of that by getting a job. It’s only a temporary job and I have no idea how long it’s going to last, but it is at least some work for the moment. Obviously, this has largely filled up my daytimes during the week.

But more of half of my evenings are now filled up as well. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve started dancing twice a week, so with that and morris I’m out Monday to Wednesday evenings, plus I’m now finally getting some roleplaying in at last on a Thursday night. That’s more than half the evenings in the week filled with regular things. That leaves Friday, Saturday and Sunday free, but those are often also filled with morris ales, jive freestyles, music sessions, concerts and the like.

The strange thing about all this is the way it seems to have snuck up on me. I’ve gone from doing nothing and spending my time being bored and a bit lonely to being fairly busy most of the time almost instantaneously and by virtue of only a few small changes in my overall situation. I don’t know how long it will last. As I say, my current job is only temporary and could end at any time, and while I do have a few other possibilities on the horizon there’s nothing anywhere near certain as of yet. If that comes to an end my daytimes will become free again and I’ll only be left with the evenings to do anything. But for now at least, I am quite busy for the first time in ages and although it’s somewhat tiring (and particularly means I have to be very careful about getting to bed on time as I rarely have the opportunity to get an early night to make up for a previous late one), this is definitely a Good Thing.

I had an interview this morning. As ever, I don’t really know for sure how it went, but I do think I’m in with a decent chance with this one. I was going to say I have a good feeling about this one, but that wouldn’t be true. Honestly, I am filled with dread.

Which I realise is silly. Sure, this job isn’t exactly what I pictured myself doing (not that I have ever really had a firm idea of what I wanted to do), and there are aspects of it that aren’t quite what I would want, but honestly no job is going to be perfect. Whatever I end up doing, there are going to be some crappy aspects to it. And this would be a decent job with the potential to turn into an actual career, or at least put me in a much better position to begin one. Really it’s just anxiety over change in my life.

It’s odd, really. I’m not at all happy with my current state of existence. But the idea of changing it is still terrifying.

That said, there are other jobs I’ve applied for recently that I think I would rather do. There’ll be a few weeks before I start this one even if I do get it, so who knows; maybe I’ll end up in one of them instead.