23/08/2026
Thank you. ❤️
You lot really do make my heart ridiculously happy.
Thank you for coming, dancing, laughing and generally joining in with the glorious chaos of our 1st birthday celebrations! 🪩🤠
I have LOTS of photos and videos, and when I’m back from holiday I’ll post everything I have and do a proper write-up of the evening, including all the bits where things went beautifully to plan and, more importantly, all the bits where they absolutely did not. 😂
But for now… I’m taking a little break! 🏖️
The wonderful Amanda is looking after you all this week, so please be nice to her, dance beautifully and remember that classes are CASH ONLY this week.
Have a brilliant week, everyone. Rest those feet, rehabilitate those knees and try to remember what your legs felt like before we made you dance quite so much. 😂
And please post your photos and videos from our birthday evening below! I’d absolutely love to see the night through your eyes. ❤️
Thank you for making our first year something rather special.
See you when I’m back! 🤠🪩❤️
And here's the speech from last night...
One year old.
I’ve been trying to work out how to write this for days.
And it turns out there isn’t really a funny way of saying, “You lot changed my life.”
Although I shall obviously attempt to put some jokes around it, because we have standards.
A little over a year ago, my world had become very small.
After having my children, I’d become quite isolated. My social circle had shrunk, I’d been through some difficult times, including some frightening health scares, and somewhere amongst being Mum, working, looking after everyone else and simply getting through life, I had completely lost my sense of who I was.
And, if I’m truthful, I’d lost a lot of my confidence too.
My husband saw it before I did.
He told me I needed to get out. I needed to go dancing again. I needed something that was mine.
And then came the suggestion:
Why don’t you start your own class?
This was, depending on your perspective, either an excellent idea or a catastrophic failure to predict what his wife is like when given a project.
So I did.
And I will never, ever forget that first night.
I stood in this hall absolutely terrified.
I’d spent weeks wondering whether anyone would actually come. Whether I could still do this. Whether I was good enough. Whether people would enjoy it.
I had lost so much confidence in myself that even standing at the front of that hall felt enormous.
And then the doors opened.
And more than 90 people walked through them.
NINETY.
Apparently, Oxfordshire had been harbouring a secret population of people just waiting for somebody to shout “GRAPEVINE!” at them.
I remember looking at that room and thinking, What on earth have I done?
I don't think I realised then that I wasn't just starting a line dance class.
I was finding myself again.
One class became more classes. A handful of familiar faces became hundreds. Then came socials, workshops, demonstrations, competitions, charity events, road trips, costumes, props, raffles, quizzes and an increasingly questionable collection of ideas that you all continue to encourage.
“One more time” has become universally understood to mean at least three.
There is always another left.
Nobody knows what wall we're on.
The back row is definitely listening.
And if everybody goes wrong together, we simply call it a variation.
But the dancing is only a tiny part of what we've built.
Over this year I've watched people walk through our doors alone and find friends.
I've watched nervous beginners gradually creep forwards from the back row.
I've watched people gain confidence, help each other, cheer for each other, go to socials together, visit other clubs together and form friendships that didn't exist twelve months ago.
And somewhere amongst all of that…
I found my people too.
What began because I was lonely has become the reason I so rarely feel lonely anymore.
You gave me somewhere to belong at a time when I desperately needed it.
You helped me find the confident, ridiculous, slightly chaotic version of myself that I thought I'd lost somewhere along the way.
And I don't think I can ever properly explain what that means to me.
I might be the person standing at the front shouting counts and occasionally yelling “OTHER LEFT!”, but you built this community.
Every person who walked through that door.
Every person who came back.
Every person who brought a friend.
Every person who welcomed somebody new.
Every person who volunteered for one of my schemes without asking nearly enough questions beforehand.
Every stomp, every wrong turn, every ridiculous costume, every laugh and every “OH GOD, THERE'S A TAG!”
You made this.
A year ago, I stood in this hall frightened that nobody would come.
Tonight, I get to stand in the same hall surrounded by a community I couldn't possibly have imagined.
And that gets me every single time.
So thank you.
Thank you for trusting me.
Thank you for supporting me.
Thank you for supporting each other.
Thank you for turning up when you know the dance, and turning up when you haven't got the faintest idea what's happening.
Thank you for letting me have ridiculous ideas and, even more worryingly, agreeing to participate in them.
And thank you to my husband, who looked at his slightly lost wife and said:
“You need to go dancing again.”
He probably thought I'd just leave the house occasionally.
Instead, we appear to have created a small line dancing civilisation.
Sorry about that.
But most of all, thank you for giving me back a piece of myself that I hadn't even realised I'd lost.
Vale & White Horse Line Dancers is one year old.
And I couldn't be prouder of what we have built.
Here's to year two.
May our boots remain stompy, our friendships remain strong, our grapevines travel vaguely in the correct direction and, one day, against all known laws of line dancing…
may we finally work out what wall we're on. ❤️🤠
Thank you for giving me my village.
