Twerking? Not me!

My working life seems to be full of things beginning 'tw...'. No, I don't mean twerking because, well, it would be wholly inappropriate at my time of life and actually I think the jury is out as to whether it can ever be truly described as appropriate. Will a certain Ms Cyrus look back at her life when she is fifty-something and wonder whether being famous for wiggling in a pair of white pants was really a good call? I wonder... but then I always wonder about the price of celebrity because it seems to me that there is some sort of relationship between the complete lack of discernible talent and the need for notoriety.

Anyway I have been tweeting (on behalf of myself and three other august bodies) and, as a result, tweetdecking and tweetreaching. Indeed, I have gone through much of the last eighteen or so years thinking that the only requirement for 'tw...' is for twins. But life is, in my experience, always a series of learning curves and once you get to the top of one, much like cycling, blow me down! there's another.

And talking of cycling which is much on my mind given that I should be training for the Acorn 100k Bike Ride on May 10th but I am not because one of my knees does not wish to co-operate with the pedalling process so I am attempting to lull it into a false sense of security that it might never happen... Aside from the Acorn Bike Ride there is, of course, a slightly larger (but with not such good cakes) cycling event coming to Yorkshire and I am ridiculously thrilled that Yorkshire, in the form of Gary Verity and his team, has pulled off the coup of bringing the biggest annual sporting event in the world to ... just up the road!

The other night, my beloved and I were lucky enough to be invited to the launch of Le Tour Yorkshire exactly 100 days before the race in the form of a dinner at Ripon Cathedral. Wow, that's some venue for a dinner and it was an amazing and spectacular night. I loved best the acrobats who swayed, swung and generally contorted from lengths of material hanging from the beautiful ornate, lofted ceiling and the feeling of pride in the county was just phenomenal. Yes, this is a great thing for Yorkshire and I can't believe there are still a few miserable sods who think that it is just a nuisance. Actually I sat next to one the other night who said the whole thing was an inconvenience and he objected to them closing the roads on the route. Ah well, there's always one...

Back to the twerking though and on Saturday we went to a 50th birthday party and, as in parties we used to go to in our energetic youth, there was a disco in the cellar, complete with disco ball. Great, I thought as I dragged my beloved into the sparkly depths. Except that it turned out he was the only man in the room surrounded by 50-something ladies (age, not number though there were probably more than a baker's dozen) doing the kind of dancing that looked good in 1975. This included a small group that knew all the words and moves (who knew there were moves?!) to Tragedy by the BeeGees so they played it twice to demonstrate their prowess. And that was enough to send my beloved scuttling upstairs to the safety of the beer on tap. But no, there was not a twerk in sight. Nope, twerking is not age-appropriate. I'll stick to other 'tw...s'.

Postscript: Quick update on the offspring, in case you wondered... 1 is just back from LA and we're really hoping to see her at Easter (the Egg Hunt is never the same without her). 2 is just back from London where she was seeing Gary Barlow. Consequently Milton, the chocolate brown cocker spaniel was in residence and has now decided that 5.30am is a good time to start barking...hmmm. 3 is in Leeds all week doing his tennis coaching qualification and if he tells me one more time that a backhand volley should only have one hand on the racquet, he may not survive to use his new qualifications. And 4 is hitting the books big style before we head up to Edinburgh next week for her final university interview. Fingers crossed...

Ripon Cathedral - going yellow for Le Tour