Don’t stop dancing or you’ll fall off

Today’s random word is… Fall

Because I am British and not American when I think fall I think ‘ouch’ not ‘autumn’.

Boring assemblies at school (sat cross-legged on the floor listening to parables and singing hymns) were made all the more enjoyable by comparing scraped and damaged knees from various and frequent falls (and if you were really lucky, a big scab to pick at)! We were always falling down. Always. And then we jumped back up again and got on with it.

You know when you’re a proper grown-up because falling over becomes a really big deal. As well as the mortifying humiliation and the whole being a laughing-stock thing there’s also the PAIN!

Being on the ground is an alien thing for a fully-grown adult. Even in happier circumstances than falling arse-over-tit to get there (such as lying on the beach or sat on a lovely picnic rug) it feels quite… strange. Gravity is definitely in charge!

1. Very Low, 2. More grass, 3. Untitled, 4. flipping heck

There’s a scene at the end of Gregory’s Girl (I love that film, grew up with that film) where they are lying on the ground talking about how we’re clinging to the surface of this planet by “the mysterious force of gravity” and then do a lying-down gravity-defying dance. Our foot print on the earth is just that, our footprints. When you’re sprawled on the ground, either belly down hugging the earth or looking up into the infinite space above it’s really quite a spiritual thing, makes you feel more in tune with all things elemental. Don’t wait to fall over your shoe-laces to experience it, keep your dignity and ease yourself gently down until you’re eye-to-eye with an ant – it’s a whole new world (and the childhood memories come flooding back).

[fast forward to 2 minutes if you don’t have time to watch the whole clip]

NB – was horrified whilst searching for this clip on YouTube that the non-UK version is DUBBED. I guess there was a need to or they wouldn’t have gone to the bother, but it was weird hearing different voices saying the words I know so well – especially as the new voices are only about 3% less Scottish than the originals.