Dancing By the Beach .

The City of Charles Stuart, in its wisdom, organised the Coastal Sounds event for the King's Birthday public holiday on Monday. Assorted local musicians and choirs were billed to perform at spots along the coastline between Henley Beach and Semaphore.  This seemed like a high-risk activity, given that the June weather in Adelaide was not always conducive to enjoying outdoor entertainment, but the City of Charles Stuart was up for the risk and it paid off.  We headed down to the beach in sunny weather, albeit with a stiff cold breeze.

Beautiful weather for coastal sounds.

The Adelaide Ukelele Appreciation Society was our first entertainment of choice.  The AUAS made up in enthusiasm what they may have lacked in other areas pertaining to musical abilities.  Walkers, cyclists, very wet dogs, and joggers did not distract them: they strummed and sang with great gusto, each one taking a turn at the microphone in an egalitarian display of their full spectrum of talent. 

The AUAS in full swing.

With the bar set high by the AUAS the following performers, while nice, didn't hold nearly the same entertainment value.

Pretty girl sings sweet songs.

All worn out from sitting in the cold wind watching other people enjoying themselves,  we settled onto seats to drink hot chocolate and catch a little bit of sunshine when something caught Roger's eye.  "Look! There's an orange lady!"

Indeed there was an orange lady, gyrating her way across the Common with an entourage of slightly less orange fellow gyrators.

Some minor sleuthing (ie following the orange lady) led us to our final musical event and the highlight of our day: the (silent) disco on the beach. We lined up at a table and received a headset each from the orange lady.  The headset delivered us to a world of cheesy disco music and the orange lady's choreographic directions. With our heads full of music that no one else could hear, surrounded by strangers doing the same thing, we gyrated and bopped across the beach, through the surf club, and performed before the bemused diners in all the restaurants around the green. 

We surrounded random strangers, formed a conga line, danced the Nutbush, and had a dance-off (or some of us did, anyway). Finally, puffing a little, we handed our headphones back and returned to our respectable and sensible selves with just a little bit of lamentation that our bodies didn't tolerate the Nutbush quite as well as they used to.

By then it was late afternoon and the clouds had rolled in to banish the sun.

Rain a'coming.

Off we went home again, where the cat was curled in a puddle on the coffee table, exactly where we'd left him several hours ago. I looked closely. Phew! He was still breathing.

OK, bedtime! You look all worn out.