Last year's account was rather long. Let us see whether I can make this year's shorter [as if! - Ed.].

Yes, I went again. I had a decent time last year. This year, fewer of my Newcastle fellows would be there, but it still seemed to be in the spirit of participation to attend. I would roll the dice yet again.

I got my affairs in order as best I could, and on the day before departure, finished all the tasks that had to be done before I went. Deadlines are great – I get so much done! One task, which took longer than the DVD of Gosford Park I was watching, was to oil my armour so that I did not return to a nightmare of rust. Foolishly, I put it away in the box downstairs. Now I have to decide whether to unpack it all again, or heave the box upstairs as it is.

My flight was at 6 a.m., which meant getting up at about 4, and thanks to my haywire sleep patterns and long list of tasks, meant that I got just one hour of sleep before the journey. I would arrive at Herräng pre-exhausted.

The journey could have been better. The passport system at Amsterdam was causing problems, leading to a two-hour queue of people that ran back past all the shops. A stranger in the next lane of the many-laned winding path of queue before the inspectors recognised me as a YouTuber he liked. This was fine, and we talked for a bit, and then the queue moved. After a while, we passed each other again in the opposite direction, very slowly. This happened many times. Eventually, we ran out of things to say.

At Arlanda, the luggage conveyor belt broke, but before they gave up and carried our luggage by hand over to the other belt – a feat achieved very quickly – they spent a brave hour trying to fix the first one.

The weather was sunny, and I was there in good time, so the bus journey to the camp was easy. I took my usual route via Rimbo. Sweden looked like itself. Its resemblance to a wargaming table always strikes me. It's the flatness, the lack of hedges and walls, the surface rocks, and the very few colours and textures on the palette.

On the last leg of the journey, between Hallstavik and Herräng, I noticed how many of the place names ended with vägskäl, which I was later told means 'junction', which, to a native English-speaker, conjures up an image of a mighty transport hub, rather than the farm-track turn-offs I saw.

I went to pitch my tent in the usual place, and as I was inserting one of the tent poles, it broke in two places. Not a good start. Fortunately, I had been too lazy to remove from the bag some surviving pole sections from a previous pole casualty, and with these I was able to improvise a repair, although the new pole was slightly shorter. If tent designers would make pole sections all the same length, barring the shorter ones on the ends that never break, life would be easier. I was already tired enough to want to just go to bed.

But there was an evening meeting to attend, and a night of partying to party, so I bought a ticket and went to the evening meeting. I walked round to the window of the Bar Bedlam Cafe, and asked after my friend who was the head cook there. There was an awkward pause. It seemed that he had already left the camp. I later learned that he had been asked to leave after differences of opinion on the running of the cafe. Still, he tells me that he is planning to go to the camp again, but not as a cook, so there aren't too many sour grapes.

The new dining hall tent, which was for some reason some distance from the restaurant.

This account has been written not in one burst of memory-dumping soon after the trip, but instead over many forgetful months. Consequently, it makes little sense for me to try to recall what happened when, and instead I shall just type out things as I think of them. I did make a list of things to write about, but some of these, such as 'Uncharisma Man' and 'Doctor Who' fail to remind me of whatever it was that I once thought worthy of mention.

Enough time has passed to make to question which day I arrived. My best guess is that it was Tuesday of week two. This, I think would have been blues night, which might to some extent explain how well that went (see below). I don't think much happened on Wednesday, so let us fast-forward to:

THURSDAY

There was an American chap there this year called Deryl (? or similar), who was presenting all the evening meetings that week. His face reminded me of Wesley Snipes, and I found him quite mysterious. I saw him with a comb stuck in his hair quite a lot of times, and asked him about it. He claimed that sometimes he forgot that it was there. This struck me as unlikely. It isn't impossible, of course, but in all my years I don't think I have once gone out in public with a comb stuck in my hair, having left it there accidentally mid-way through grooming. Others suggested that it might be a Black Panther symbol, and showed me examples of such combs with fists moulded onto their handles, but his seemed plain. Other black Americans said that since an Afro was a high-maintenance hairstyle that can be spoiled by a little more than a nudge, that it was there for quick repairs. The comb was shiny, so possibly it was being worn as a form of jewellery? The mystery remained, but 'D' did seem to take himself very seriously – so seriously that the comb-in-hair thing seemed deliberate, but if it was deliberate, why did his insist that it was accidental?

On this, the last day of his stage-presenting stint, he came to front of the stage and told us that he had some things to tell us. He said a couple of moderately nice things about us, but then started listing a number of our faults, which included that we were arrogant, impatient, and quite a few other things. I think 'lazy' might have been one. After saying the first three, this got a laugh. Not unnaturally, people had imagined that it was intended as a joke, but he paused, and looked up at us from his notes with a look that made it clear that this was no joke, and then went on with his written list. He flew home soon after, leaving a lot of bemused people.

FIRST CABARET NIGHT

For this, I was but a humble witness. I managed to get a decent place in the Folketshus to watch it. The opening act started as a slow sad song, which I think the audience recognised but I didn't, in which the singer lamented the loss of her lover, which then segued rather sharply into These Boots Were Made For Walking signifying an abrupt change of attitude.

Frida Segerdahl was our hostess, and she did a fine job, leaning hard into her Swedish accent and getting laughs for doing so. She introduced the various acts which I may have entirely forgotten had I not made the effort to note them down soon afterwards, but even then it was possible that I missed one or two out. These included:

“Hunter and rabbit act” - a silly solo act in which a man got the audience to try to copy his hand movements. It was deceptively difficult and played for laughs. I'd seen him do this act before, many years before.

“Maths sign dance” - another audience participation act.

“German menstrual rap” - Katharina Schüßler, with a backing band, sang a rap-influenced song about menstruation and her moods during its various cyclic stages. She sang it in German, however, and so most of the nuances of meaning were lost on us, however she made up for our ignorance quite a lot by the degree of passion and movement that went into the performance. I'm pretty sure I guessed which stage was which.

“Great song Steve Scott and my friend” - despite the shame of it, I shall admit that time, sleep deprivation, and mundane rubbishness has put the identity of “my friend” beyond recall. Someone sang a good song, and a guitarist walked onto the stage after a while and started adding an accompaniment. Was this rehearsed? I don't know. It might have been a spontaneous addition.

“Crap magician” - There were a couple of appearances by an entertainingly inept magician. One included a cut-out shape suspended on a string and spun, which was to create an optical illusion. Possibly, for some people sitting in the right part of the audience, the spectacle was arresting. The magician had an 'assistant' who was a camp man in a bunny suit who appeared to have no function other than to marvel at the tricks.

“Philip Brandin and 'phone” - Philip Brandin stood at the back of the stage and sang Stardust Memories to a backing track. He chose the static style of stage presentation, and his performance was marred by his standing there with a glowing mobile telephone in his hand, on which were the lyrics, to which he referred a few times, studying them particularly during the instrumental bits.

The you-had-to-be-there act of the night may well have been that of a very tall man sitting at an electric keyboard and performing a song that he told us he had just written. This started with a very long introduction. Indeed, the introduction was so very long that I'm sure that many in the audience were, like me, thinking that it was a joke song, the joke being that it didn't get started until the end. There were hesitations in his play, as he struggled to read his music, and one of these got quite a big laugh when he said in it something like “Ah! Richtig! Alles klar.” Eventually, he got to the singing part, and the words of the chorus appeared projected on a screen behind him.

The tune was as simple and catchy as you might easily imagine. Such was the quality of the audience, that we all sang along. For the rest of the camp, the bar's menu downstairs offered “Lindy-hoppy-poppy nachos”.

The show closed with “Chinese girl Charleston”.

As the audience shuffled out, I started singing the nachos song. Desultory at first, this rose to a widespread gentle rendition of the chorus that went on and on until people were sick of it. Sorry.

	Some people seem to think this funny. There I was, after a hard night's dancing, having a quick rest so that I could do more later to please the ladyfolk, and at least three people leapt upon the opportunity to picture me thus, as though it signified that I was in some way reprehensible for this behaviour.

STUFF PEOPLE SAID AND DIDN'T SAY

Of course I caught up with old friends, even though most people there were strangers to me. I don't recall anyone's mentioning my account of last year on my website, so perhaps no one had read it. What I did hear, though was quite a bit about the terrible time Daniel Heedman has had since trying to buy the camp. He's had death threats and has been cast out of the Herräng world, it seems. He now lives up north in Luleå and was that year hosting a camp of his own with his wife Åsa, called Heedman Dance Camp. It started immediately after Herräng Dance Camp, and shared its initials, which did not seem a coincidence. The camp never got a mention from any official source at the camp, and I saw no fliers for it with those advertising many other camps. It seems that there has been a terrible and perhaps irreversible split. I've remained in contact with the Heedmans, and suggested an interview about what has happened, which I could write up here, or make into a video for my YouTube channel, but in the end they felt that they'd rather just not bother, but I was thanked for being one of the very few people who contacted them at all. It is amazing to me how people in a world such as that of swing dancing, which is so filled with good will and good intentions, manage to schism so badly. Anyway, the other HDC went ahead and was a success it seems, and now there are two more on the way. I wish them well.

I heard more detail of the extraordinary arrival at the camp some years before of the Carling Family Band. I'm too hazy now on the details to say much, but the gist seems to be that the camp thought that booking the full family was too risky because one or two of the members had been publicised for saying some politically incorrect things. Instead, Gunhild, the darling of Swedish television after her near-victory in the Let's Dance dancing reality show competition, was booked with her band, which would probably have been fine had the rest of the family not shown up unannounced and uninvited. It seems that they tried to force themselves into the limelight, and that quite a vigorous chase scene erupted.

One night, I shared lower-back-pain stories with two other gents of my generation. Humans need a redesign.

Of the survey that we were all entreated to take last year, and about which I wrote extensively in my account of last year's camp, there was no one word spoken. I think that people had twigged that it was useless, and so the less said about it the better.

One thing I did hear, though, was that there are now specious sources peddling the idea that Frankie Manning and others were somehow made to attend the camp and were what the Americans call 'Uncle Tom' figures. This is plain wrong. No one equipped with eyes and working brain could have witnessed Frankie at Herräng and not seen that he was delighted to be there. The notion that he could somehow be forced against his will to attend for multiple weeks, year after year after year, and remain outwardly cheerful is not just ludicrous, but insulting to his memory and to all who were there – which includes me. Frankie spent about two thirds of his year being jetted all round the world, and treated like royalty at swing camps far and wide. He loved it. Dawn Hampton was a lady who knew her own mind all right, and where did she choose to have her ashes scattered? Herräng. Norma Miller would have struck down such nonsense with a withering glare and sharp remark. Why, though, might anyone try to put this daft idea about? Well, it seems that THEY want to gain power for themselves by becoming the new gatekeepers of the True Knowledge in the swing world, and so they have to be able to write out these characters so that what they said can be replaced with a new version of events that puts THEM at the centre of things, so that THEY can seize control of Lindy hop. Those of us who remember the old-timers must make sure that this does not happen. Lindy is for everyone. Who are THEY? See last year's account.

	Why is there this strange curtain in the exhibition room, covering one corner of the room?
	Aha! Beneath it is an image of this man. If you don't know who he is, then you have missed out on perhaps the biggest scandal of the Lindy hop world in the last thirty years. He is Steven Mitchell, disgraced for grooming young female dancers. He was also for many years the highest-paid swing dance teacher in the world, and a key figure in the 1980s revival.
	But the same corner curtain hides Hasse and Marie, and they remain great, so this seems unfair. My feeling is that the best way to understand history is not to go out of your way to make sure that everyone forgets it.
	The same room now contained a small library of books on a very very narrow theme.

AFROCENTRIC GUFF

Each evening meeting, we were made to sit through another slow video put together for our indoctrination. Now, I know that Josette Wigan and Marie N'diaye were two of the people behind this series, and I must make it clear right now that I mean them no ill. Marie has been only pleasant in my presence, and I can honestly say that Josette is one of the nicest people I have ever met. They were introduced as 'Professor' and 'Doctor' respectively, and then it became clear that they were not doctors of film-making, history, nor philosophy.

The videos presented ridiculously simplified and often wrong statements about vast topics such as philosophy. 'White' philosophy was represented by a single incorrectly-interpreted quotation from Rene Descartes (“I think therefore I am”). This was then contrasted with 'black' philosophy which was boiled down to a single quote “I am because we are” (J. S. Mbiti, I think), which was presented as proof that all dark-skinned people from all cultures around the world were united in a single philosophy that contrasted incompatibly with all 'white' ideas. Having read a bit of philosophy, I can tell you now that even if we look just at one school of philosophy from one place at one time (the Stoics of ancient Athens), there was massive disagreement. The notion that Africa, with its three thousand linguistic groups, and far and away the greatest human genetic diversity on Earth, is somehow uniform in philosophy, is absurd, as is the idea that a philosophical idea can have a race.

We were treated to a quote from the famous London-educated South Africa lawyer Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. I've not since been able to find it anywhere on the web, but it was near enough this: “To be enslaved by someone with exactly the opposite philosophy is the worst slavery of all.” I'm pretty sure that we, the audience of the video, were supposed to assume that the quote was true because it was attributed to Gandhi, and somehow relevant in this context. What is the exact opposite philosophy to all black people? What has slavery got to do with Lindy hop? If you were enslaved by people who believed in comfort, healthy diet, and free top-quality modern medical care, while you were a passionate believer in cold discomfort, a diet of cabbage only, and the methods of the medieval horse doctor, would that be the worst possible type of slavery?

We were told that people arriving in the USA were assumed to have no culture. Really? All groups? No culture at all? Do you believe that? We were then told that blacks uniquely had the concept of 'community' and that this enabled them to create Lindy hop. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I'm fairly sure that there were Jewish, Irish, Italian, Polish, German, Chinese, Indian, and many more communities in the USA, and that they were able to achieve quite a bit. Without 'community' there would not have been civilisation in Europe. It takes a vast community of expertises, built up of over many generations, to make grand opera possible. This seemed to be some sort of desperate attempt to show that people of sub-Saharan African descent were solely responsible for the creation of Lindy hop. No. I've seen the old films. There are people of varied skin colours, all wearing immaculate English-style formal wear, playing pianos, trumpets, clarinets, and all manner of European instruments tuned to the European scales, and doing something that was invented in the ballrooms of Europe: partner dancing.

In an evening lecture in the library, a version of history was presented that was bizarrely self-contradictory. It declared that uniquely black traits like improvisation, feel, and rhythm were needed to create Lindy hop. It also included the creation of Balboa ('Bal shuffle') – an improvised jazz-rhythm dance – which was created by... well... they looked fairly pale to me. There was also another dance called 'swing' that the palefaces were dancing before the Lindy spread to them. Essentially, people with ballroom skills all round the world were hearing swing jazz, and responding to it logically. The Lindy hop had one important step – the Lindy turn (AKA 'swing out') – which it seems that other swing dances lacked. Mind you, there was a very similar step in Charleston... How, I wonder, did these poor palefaced types manage to dance 'swing' when they had no ability to improvise, no rhythm, and no feel? It's almost as though all this racist stuff is... nah. Can't be, right?

We were also told that there was a 'black' cultural thing of dressing up smartly on special occasions. I think you'll find that that is ALL cultures. Other uniquely 'black' things that as a paleface I might not understand included having an individual style, an ability to adapt, resilience, and improvisation. I'll just have to forget how famous people like Mozart and Beethoven were for their amazing musical improvisations, how English barristers have to think on their feet, and instead meditate on how European culture didn't change between 3000 B.C. And A.D. 1960 because no one there could adapt. I dare say that the peasants of feudal societies, who were survivors of all the various wars and plagues that swept through Europe dozens of times didn't develop any resilience, because they had never suffered. Still, the education I got at Herräng was useful in explaining why I can't tell any of my 'white' friends apart. It's because they have no concept of individual style. Next time I see English folk clog dancers doing their stuff, I'll have to tell them to stop improvising, because it's cultural appropriation.

In case you are inclined, Dear Reader, to dismiss this section as the ravings of a singular fool, please understand that I was very far from alone in my reaction to these videos and lectures. I did not hear anyone defend them, and several people, including complete strangers to me, upon hearing them mentioned, immediately voiced their criticism in no uncertain terms. I suppose that they washed over a lot of people who just put up with them passively, while waiting for the good stuff to start.

When Chester photobombs, he does it with style! Here I am, posing with three members of my dance troupe (all living in Britain, but from Hong Kong, Poland, and Malaysia), plus a Mexican chap whom I taught in Britain, but who now lives in Norway, plus a lady from Germany/Belgium who joined us for some reason.

GERMAN HOUSE PARTIES

I was deemed worthy of an invitation to the German house party. I was given an address, and after some late-night duties elsewhere, made my way there in the darkness. The party was mostly over, but I had a pleasant time talking to the few remaining guests and hosts. The house was a house rented by people who happened to be German, and it seems that the tradition at the camp is quite well established. Rather than buy the drink at Swedish prices, they filled a car in Germany for German prices, and arrived with enough gin and tonic for a few nights of mass consumption. There was certainly plenty to drink. I didn't disgrace myself to such a great extent that I was invited back. The next one I attended earlier in the evening, while it was still packed, and was able to contribute a large bottle of duty-free Bombay Sapphire.

It is strange to me that so many things like this happen – events at a camp that take people away from the already-plentiful events at the camp. There are also many clashing official events. I suppose that the camp is so long and so big that there's no stopping this. Anyway, the party was good. The people were well-lubricated yet civil. There was 'normal' party music for people to bop to in the front room, and conversation in the kitchen and corridor. For a while I talked to an American lady, who seemed perplexed that I was talking to her. After a while, she told me that she was a lesbian and asked couldn't I tell? I said that yes, I supposed that there was perhaps a masculine edge to her grooming style, but that I shouldn't presume. She then seemed more perplexed that I carried on talking to her. I had imagined that she was more than her sexuality, and that we could talk about dancing, her home city and the like. Perhaps she thought that I was wasting both our times. She ended the conversation. A day or two later I asked her for a dance. No.

I have lost count of the number of times I have bashed my head on this door-return spring.

WONDERS OF THE WORLD

When visiting the office one day, I saw the video editor getting on with making a promotional trailer for the party to come. The videos the camp comes up with are sometimes great and impressively professional. This one opened with a perfect Herräng-version of the Paramount logo, leading into a Raiders of the Lost Ark-style sequence, complete with great colour-grading, and swish camera moves.

Word had reached me from several people separately that the previous week's Friday night themed party had not been good. The theme was 'superheroes', which might seem promising, but the consensus was that one command from on-high had stifled its fun potential. The edict forbade villains. This meant that the party had lots of heroes standing around with nothing to do. There were no threats to the safety of civilisation as we knew it, and so no reason to use superpowers other than to show off.

Some months later, I chatted with Marie, and she said that the edict did not come from her. Had a lower-down official imposed it, or was it born out of some strange conspiracy of Chinese whispers? We may never know.

This week's theme was 'Wonders of the World'. Interpretations varied to such a degree that it was difficult to think of ways to make these compatible. Sliced bread was, for example, considered to be as valid an interpretation as The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and there aren't many activities that can be tailored to suit both simultaneously. It was decided that there should be a treasure hunt, and I was, the day before the party, asked to devise it. The resources available to me were not defined, but were slight. It was a challenge.

There were about eight hundred people expected at the party. Perhaps as many as five hundred might take part. There might be as few as two hundred present when the opening show announced the hunt. How many people would stick with the game? No one could possibly know. So, I needed to devise a treasure hunt that worked with five people and five hundred, and which could accommodate late-comers.

I decided that the hunt should not involve the hunters' having to write anything down, which ruled out a lot of designs. There should also not be a single linear path to the finish, because then the first person to find the first clue would have a huge advantage, and lots of people might just follow him around in a conga line. Lots of ideas involved the hunters' finding things, moving things, leaving proof they had been somewhere, and other things that also would require clues to need resetting so that others could find them. I also toyed with using runes and cyphers for the clues, but concluded that life was complicated enough already.

Photograph by Isa (@habiba house)

A picture, to break the monotony.

I decided that the things that people needed to find would be small rectangles of UPS (Universal Problem Solver, AKA 'masking tape') with codes written on them. These could be left in place during the game, would peel off easily afterwards, and would keep things cheap and simple.

Some semblance of a system seemed wise. The codes were typically three characters long, and if they ended in a 0, then they referred to something in the cafe, similarly 251 would be a clue on the stairs. Of course, in a treasure hunt, one cannot be straightforward and non-epic in the naming of locations, so the cafe was the 'place of the brown gold', and the stairs were 'the path of ascendance'. 872 would be in the foyer ('Chamber of the Great Gate'), 913 the dansbanan ('the Wooden Hall of the Hex' I think), 384 the library (the 'Hall of Knowledge'), 446 the ballroom ('the Great Hall'), 927 the exhibition area ('the Hall of Heroes'), 529 the bar ('the Hall of the Feasting'), and a four-figure code ending in 10 would be outside the building (but not far away). Codes ending in 5 were special in that they had no clues that led to them – they were the starting nodes, and everyone was told in advance that they were all on doors in the Folketshus, which was true. I thought that people would quickly spread out and find these, and so start in many different places. I was wrong. Instead, most of the numbers on the doors were never found, despite being really (I thought) easy to find, and despite its being an advantage to find a starting node that no one else was using.

But before you get too impressed by my sound methodology, understand that I was having to write out clues and assign numbers to things even before other rooms had been scouted. I couldn't just wander into all these places at any time and plant the code numbered tapes. Rooms were shut for cleaning or lessons, people were loitering there and would have seen too much. I wrote clues to places and then assigned numbers to those places, and then wrote more clues, ticking off locations and clues that had been assigned and given a clue pointing to them. It was all a bit ad-hoc, though, and mistakes were made, and though I spotted most of them and patched things up somehow, it was far from perfect. When I got back home after the trip and analysed the clues more carefully, I found two or three of the seventy-nine clues that were in limbo – not part of any of the paths to the treasure.

It was all very rushed. I was still writing the last few clues in my big messy wodge of loose papers as the party procession was approaching the Folketshus. I had been told that my volume of clues could be bound in an ancient tome-like prop that someone would make, but the team was too busy for that. The opening ceremony took place, and I was at the end of it introduced and came to the microphone and explained my rationale for the treasure hunt, which, I now confess, I have forgotten, but because I was myself, I had to come up with a cogent explanation for why the hunt existed and why I needed many people to help me find the treasure urgently that night. Something about a deceased mad archivist and some.. ahem (holds up obviously modern photocopier paper covered in biro)... 'ancient scriptures' (at least it got a laugh), and I then told everyone about the clues on the doors, how nothing significant would have to be moved, nor anything broken to find a code, and that people were to leave the codes where they were and come and tell them to me.

An excellently-executed addition was the portrait of Dawn Hamptom at the bottom. Alas, the whole display was clearly designed for just the one circle, and now three jostle awkwardly for the centre spot.

The people went in and the party started. I had foolishly imagined myself wandering around the party, giving out a bit of help here and there, perhaps getting a few dances in, and being stopped for the occasional clue. Instead, I found it very difficult to move from one spot in the foyer. So many people played the game, and so tenaciously, that a queue formed next to me and I seldom got rid of it. People wisely formed teams and the cannier teams would have one member in the queue, while others hunted about for more codes. Going to the loo was out of the question, and when I realised mid-game that there was a code that needed altering, it was ages before I found an opportunity to get to it reasonably unobserved.

I never thought that people would play for so long. I didn't think their interest would last, nor did I think it would take them so long. Most of the codes were very easy to find, and I was surprised that no one just wandered around and found many of them, unconnected by clues, and then dumped the lot on me – and thank goodness for that, I suppose. Some people joined late and did quite well in catching up. After a while, though, people who insisted that they were enjoying the hunt were getting more desperate and frustrated that they were not at the end. They started to ask how close they were. Some seemed to be losing faith in my having created a path that went anywhere. One team managed somehow to get to the same clue more than once, so felt it had gone in a circle. I explained that there were multiple paths to the end, and that they had got down one path and then jumped across to another path and then back, which meant that they could have put themselves closer to the treasure, or farther. One player came back to me again and again with a look on his face that spoke of deep pessimism, but he kept coming back. One team in particular would come back, faces all filled with hope, only for me to see those faces fall when I read out yet another clue.

Can you find the number 1065 in this picture? Well done if you did, because not one of the people playing the treasure hunt did, even though they were all told that the starting codes were on the doors. I wonder how long this number will remain there.

Lots of clues led to one bookcase, and to one book on it: a book of Swedish fairy tales, which was in Swedish (I warned people at this stage that help from a Swede would be useful), and called 'A Treasure House of Swedish Fairy Tales'. Frustratingly, a few teams that had worked hard came very close to finding it a couple of times, and a Johnny-come-lately got to it very quickly partly by luck. Eventually, though, one of the hardest-working teams got to the book and spent half an hour examining it. I didn't see this straight away, though, because I was just out of sight in the foyer. If they had come to me with their finding, I could have given them some helpful clues, but instead they stood there formulating many wrong theories. The book had page numbers – of course! - the answer will be on a page that matches one of the code numbers! (wrong). Look! - a picture of a thing that matches one of the clues, sort of (no). The actual answer was much simpler. Every page in it had a picture of the answer. It seemed right to put them out of their misery, but I wanted their journey to end in triumph rather than merely relief, so I didn't want to just tell them the answer. They had to say it to me. “It is this?” “No.” “Is it that?” “No.” Eventually, they pointed to the right thing. They just had to name it to win. A planet? No, those are not normally drawn that way. A moon? What sort of moon? “A full moon!” Did it look like a full moon? No. “A harvest moon!” No. “Waxing moon? Waning moon? Rising moon?” They named many types of moon, none of which matched the picture. At this point, a member of a different team came along, looked over the shoulder of the man holding the book and said “Oh! I see! It's a blue moon!”

I ruled that both teams had won. I couldn't rob the first team of victory when it had been so close for so long and put in so much effort. Yes, the treasure was in the Blue Moon Cafe, and there they would get their prize, which was a very large amount of a special prize dish involving brownies, cream, ice cream, and bananas. I took me a while to organise the prize, telling the staff of the cafe to prepare it for a larger number of winners than expected. The plan was to create an impressively large pile of all the ingredients, and let the winners all tuck in. These, however, are modern times, and such simplicity is no longer accepted. One person was allergic to banana, another didn't like banana and wanted a separate serving without banana. Another didn't like cream... and on it went. I suppose that I shouldn't complain, because some of the many and various rejected components ended up on my plate, and the winners of the treasure hunt seemed happy. At this stage, I had abandoned the non-winning treasure hunters, who may have been less happy.

Of course I got asked about how many clues were needed to get to the treasure, and I had no answer. The paths were many, and each code referenced another page in my large wodge of now-well-thumbed pages, and led to a clue that led to something on another page. Only now that I have come home and at leisure analysed the paths out of curiosity am I now able to say that there were ten different sets of clues that led to the treasure. If you started at the door that had the 625 code on it, and then correctly found all the clues that belonged to that path, then you would have reached the treasure in ten steps. This was the mode number, as two other paths had ten, and one had nine, and another eleven. There were two paths that were just six long, but if you were unlucky and ended up on the longest paths, then there was one of fifteen, and another of eighteen steps (whoops). There was also one of merely four, which was far too short, and fortunately, no one succeeded on that path, but if they had, I'm sure that I would have spotted my error and then put them onto another path.

I have forgotten how long the treasure hunt lasted, but it might have been as much as three hours. It struck me that no one seemed to be looking for clues by thinking to themselves “If I were trying to find somewhere in this room that I could give a clue to, where would I pick?” Anyway, I now know how to do one form of treasure hunt that works. Perhaps were I to do another, I would use different coloured pens for each path.

After all this, my duty was over and I could start dancing. The rest of the party was forgettable enough for me to have forgotten it.

EVENING MEETINGS

These were always a great feature of the camp, and I urge people to attend. Every night except Friday, there is a one-hour show. These used to be hosted very ably by Lennart Westerlund, and he had a long-experienced team behind the scenes organising the shows, but the likes of Fish and Gunnar are gone now, and a new team, headed by Maja Hellsten has sprung up. Maja seemed quite relaxed, all things considered, in her new role, and was making a decent job of it. I did notice a dip in the quality of the meetings. They had fewer items in them, were less anarchic, less daring, less surprising, less varied, and had far less input from the audience and from the old-timers who used to be consulted for their reactions to things presented on the stage, and used to be both informative and entertaining. Alas, Frankie, Norma, and Dawn and others are now gone. The evening meetings of old are a tough act to follow, and it is unreasonable to imagine that any new team is going to master the art immediately.

One night, upon entry, we were all given a wooden skewer each and a large marshmallow to impale. As we waited for the meeting to start, they projected the image of a campfire onto the screen on-stage, and many people photographed their marshmallows in the apparent act of roasting. Curious as to what the purpose of all this was, I kept mine while others greedily ate. It turned out that that was it. I donated my pink pillow of sugary synth to someone who would appreciate it more than I.

Made in previous years, these two bikes provided challenges for any who wanted a go. One was geared so that moving the handlebars one way turned the front wheel the other way, and the other had an eccentric front wheel, and was propelled by pumping the whole machine up and down.

BLUES NIGHTS 1 and 2

I was there for two very contrasting 'slow drag nights'. The first was soon after my arrival, and possibly a failure to acclimatise was the problem. I'm pretty sure that the contrast between these two nights was almost entirely due to a change in me rather than the event.

On the first night, things didn't feel right. I had forgotten all my blues moves of old, and the magic had gone out of the event. When I first went to the camp, I was a compatible age with the young women there. Ten years later, I was a decade older than them, but they didn't seem to mind a jot, and it was great. Today, though, I am literally old enough to be their father, and I did not have confidence that they would be comfortable dancing blues with me in the semi-dark. I suppose that some of my awkwardness may have come across and put my partners off, which would then confirm to me the awkwardness of it all, starting a vicious cycle. When people say the phrase 'old/young enough to be father/mother/son/daughter' they are making the age gap seem disgusting by alluding to humanity's universal taboo of incest.

Chester had choreographed two numbers for the opening of the night. He insisted that I follow him in to the rehearsals late that night, without explaining why. In the past, this has been followed by my taking part in his show. This time, though, my role was just to form part of the front line of the audience, defining the size of the space the dancers would perform in.

The show started, and as usual ended with a snowball, with the performers dancing with the crowd. I danced for a while, but thought that my days of enjoying long blues nights were over, and it wasn't long before I left.

The second blues night was about as different as it could be. I danced with more confidence (a factor may have been that by this time I was fully nocturnal), and it became very clear that the ladies didn't mind me at all. Granted, there was that one in the scarlet dress who never danced with me, but for the most part, I was having no trouble getting partners. There was in particular a very tall young Chinese girl who danced with me several times. I particularly remember feeling a sharp poke on my shoulder, and looking up to see her on the stage, and then dancing with her up there. I kept my hands within the regulation zones, but even so, the way they behave within those permitted regions can convey a degree of aroused interest.

My old forgotten moves came back to me. They were all still in there, archived and awaiting the return of my mojo. Writing this now, I have forgotten most of the partners, although I do recall that there were far more Chinese there than usual, and that these seemed to be getting particularly into the mood. My shoulder-poker took me aside for a sit and chat, but then it turned out that she spoke hardly a word of English, which greatly limited what might have happened next.

I volunteered to be interviewed about blues at Herräng, by someone making a study of these things. He seemed pleased with my information. I have now become one of the old guard. The story I told involved how people used the skills they had from Lindy, such as connection, lead-and-follow, and rhythmic interpretation, to come up with something appropriate for the music they were played – blues – and so they mimicked the people from back in the day who did the same. If the music suggests a mood and a pace, then people will react in much the same way, whatever year they were born.

THE NEXT GENERATION

Leaving us at the end of week two would be many members of 'The Next Generation'. This was a group of people being groomed for creating a tradition of Lindy hop amongst the darker-skinned folk of the USA. It seems that the 'ambassadors of swing' initiative had ended and been deemed a failure. It had, I was told, attracted the sort of people who would find out what things they could do for free, and then would, when the money ran out and it was time for them to teach others the skills they had learned, instead look around for some other grants they could get to do something else.

I'm not sure how the new scheme was supposed to work. Anyway, there was a group of dancers there who were being given lots of attention. I saw a routine or two that they did, and these were fine for people who hadn't been dancing very long, but I sensed that the audience felt required to be more impressed than it was. It was difficult to tell how much this group mixed with the masses, and how much it kept itself to itself.

Members of this group were involved in the presentation to Barbara Billups of a new award. The item itself was a nicely-made thing, and was I think intended to be the first of several, and it was delivered with a ceremony of a degree of solemnity quite alien to a Brit like me. Barbara seemed pleased, which was nice.

SATURDAY, start of week three

Chester grabbed me by the wrist, and in that strangely forceful and intense way of his roped me into his plan. He would storm into the Dream Factory office, and insist that I host the cabaret night. Then, after he had herränged them on this topic for a while and made his point, he would make an exit. We would wait a few minutes and then I would enter and with every bit as much tempestuous emphasis, I would insist that Chester be the host. All going well, they would, caught on the horns of a dilemma, end up getting us both to do it as a compromise.

I, however, remained British, and I have never been comfortable with practical jokes nor with lying, and this involved both to some degree. I was reticent, but before long found myself, seized again by the wrist, on the spiral stairs on the way to the office. In went Chester, and I hid. I had to resign myself to the fate of going through with the plan, but I would play the scene my way, and not as acted out by the pantomime-scowling Chester.

Out he came, giggling, and soon he had me manoeuvred into position. I knocked gently and made my entrance. I played my part, but very low-key, saying that Chester seemed a bit miffed not to have been asked to do the cabaret, and so I thought that perhaps it might be nice of them, if it were not too much trouble and didn't clash with their plans, to invite him to do the hosting. There were smiles around the office. Maja Hellsten,who is now in charge of these things (it used to be Gunnar's job, but he is gone now), said that strangely enough, Chester had just been in insisting that I be the host. Did she guess what was going on? I don't know. If she did, then she played it very coolly. The compromise of our both hosting the show was suggested, and I was, without much difficulty, persuaded to accept.

On hearing the news, Chester got to work, as did I. “I want to do the rope trick!” he said. He explained what he meant, and I later came back with a rope and a worked-out routine for it, I had a list of seven ideas of my own, including a series of silly links involving my showing off playing the drums between acts, which would end in his playing the drums, and proving to be be miles better than I. In the end, this never happened. We already had too much material, but it morphed into the closing number. Chester had a home-made one-string banjo-like instrument, and he got various people to make him a one-string bass out of an upturned plastic tub, broom handle and various metal fixings. This then got painted red and gold and really looked the part.

Chester wanted to enter to either the Looney Tunes or Merrie Melodies opening jingle. He played some versions off YouTube, I picked my favourite, and he did the piracy. Then, in the Lindy Hop Shop, I choreographed our entering routine. Yes, you read that correctly, I choreographed for Chester. We had very little rehearsal time, opportunities snatched in between Chester's various duties and when we were able to get the people we needed. I skipped the second half of the Thursday evening meeting, to get back to Chester in the LHS, and sketch out the ideas. There was nothing resembling a script. There never is.

The running order (right) as scrawled by me at the last moment, making sense of my notes scrawled during the rehearsal (left).

After the evening meeting, the rehearsal for the cabaret starts at around 10:30 p.m. It is always the case that various performers fail to show up, others don't have what you need to know ready, and some major alteration to the running order has to be made. This may seem like hell to some people, but actually it is a circumstance in which I thrive. I am good at working out a way to make a show work, and know that if the audience is already on one's side, then it's possible to get away with any amount of incompetence, as long as one acknowledges it, and stays good-natured. The show started at midnight, and it took a while to get all the performers out of the way, the technicians in place and up to speed, and get the audience in, so in effect there was less than an hour to put the show together. Fortunately, Maja seemed to trust us, which made things easy.

Photograph by Isa (@habiba house)

I was in my fairly-glad rags, the lights were dimmed, and I was given a mic (Maja wanted it done 'live') to welcome the audience using my 'soothing voice', and ask them to switch all their [intensely annoying] mobile telephones off. Soon after, the curtains opened, and on danced Chester, with me behind him, to a soundtrack that suited Daffy Duck. Straight away, the audience was warm, and we rehearsed it in the art of cheering to the rafters even if an act is rubbish. Now trained, the crowd was introduced the first act: Alyssa and the Swagger-Masters - a band formed at the camp. At the end of this, I did something that once I wouldn't have had the confidence to do. I could sense that there was a willingness in the crowd to cheer more, so I jumped onto the stage and threw my hands in the air, and sure enough the crowd erupted into a second big cheer for the band.

Photograph by Isa (@habiba house)

Next up was Patrick from Switzerland. His act was in front of the curtain, and it involved turning all the descriptions of levels at a dance camp into innuendo, by saying that he had had a dream that he went to 'masturbation camp' and that the descriptions of the levels seemed to confirm the fact. The camp he took his text from clearly had many levels, but each description, some with the word 'dance' having been removed, did indeed work as innuendo. To give the multi-national audience time to formulate the mental smuts, each line had to be read out very slowly. He was getting good laughs. His act was meant to be around three minutes long. After five minutes, we had a decision to make, but it wasn't difficult because he was still getting good laughs. A common mistake with acts like this is to speed up. He did not make this mistake, which takes nerve. It also took ten minutes, but it was fine – big cheer and on to the rope trick.

I introduced the next act as a singer, and turned to my left, saw our stooge waiting, dressed as a stage hand, and I claimed falsely that he was signalling to me that he was too nervous to enter. I then recruited the audience in welcoming him to the stage loudly, but still he stayed off. Chester then appeared next to me, twirling a lasso. “I'll get him,” he said. He threw the loop offstage to catch his man. The stooge caught it and held it. Chester pulled at the rope, and failed to pull on his man. I then went offstage to 'push' from the other side. I then, out of sight of the audience, got into the loop, with the stooge's help. I kept up a running commentary in my head-mic (Chester and I had taken both of the two head-mics they had). I fell down, taking the rope down with me “He knows ju jitsu! He knows ju jitsu!” I yelled. Soon, I was up again, and I counted Chester in to pull “Three... two... one... heave!”, and I let Chester pull me on. I looked at the rope, at Chester, at the stooge offstage, at the audience, then back to Chester. “Well, he's a crafty one!” I said.

I then had another 'idea'. I would grab the singer, and then Chester could pull me, and between us, we'd do it. I ran offstage, and wriggled out of the loop, which I handed to the stooge, and, talking all the time to keep up the illusion of a struggle, I ran around the back of the stage. I had done this once in rehearsal, and in the darkness I had run at high speed into a black stage flat that someone had put there, and I had to trust that this time it would not be there. It wasn't. I then entered from the other side of the stage, and grabbed the rope behind Chester, to help him pull. I announced this, and he turned his head and thanked me. We then pulled, but still without success, and I turned away from Chester. Chester then did a slow double take that got a good laugh. Philip Brandin, the Swedish singer, then appeared in front of me, and our 'mistake' was revealed. “Are you Philip?” I asked. He was. We stopped pulling. “Then who's THAT guy?” Chester gave one tug of the rope, and the stooge stage hand fell flat on his face onto the stage. And that, ladies and gentlemen, was our version of 'the rope trick'.

Photograph by Isa (@habiba house)

Philip sang, this time without holding a telephone, people clapped, then my notes say 'Jens from Germany “Failing happy”, and I confess that now that I come to write this in early November, I have forgotten that act, but this is probably because I never saw it. Next was my act: the poem 'Never Meet Your Heroines'. To be a bit different, this one came out of an on-stage conversation with Chester. He teased me about a favourite dance partner of mine (fictional) that I had a shine for, and I then conversationally went into the poem, and performed it entirely to him. The device worked fine, but I think that he could have spoken even more, but one doesn't like to interrupt a poem. The audience seemed to like it, and then it was time to get Errol and Sammy from Byzantium on.

The two Turks were teachers at the camp, so could be relied upon to be good. They did a dance routine. It was good, and the audience cheered. The pair exited the stage at speed, but I reckoned I could milk this a bit, and said “Oi! Where do you think you're going?” and dragged them back on, and, thank goodness, the warm audience redoubled its cheering efforts. It was risk, I suppose, but I trusted my instincts.

I am a bit hazy about item nine: 'Chester's dancers'. It is possible that this was his jazz dance class doing a routine, but I do recall my telling the audience that Chester was an expert at every dance form, and getting Chester to dance a bit of each that I called out, and then taking audience suggestions until eventually we asked for one that he refused with a strident “No!” Perhaps somewhere on the world there is a video of this show.

I was rather happy with my introduction for the next item. It went something like this, and was delivered with a rising energy: “Now some of you may remember the dark times. Some of you may remember THE PANDEMIC [groans]. Well, in those times, Anita, our next act, took a course on-line to learn a choreogaphy [here Chester teased me for fluffing this word, but I kept it going]... I'm allowed to fluff one word! … choreography... anyway, she and all those taking the course did so on the strict understanding and solemn promise that should any opportunity arise in the future to perform the routine in front of a proper live audience, it must be taken. This is that opportunity! [I looked into the wings and saw Anita smiling at me] So now welcome to the stage, all the way from Stuttgart: Anita!” She got a big cheer just for walking on. It was going well.

My notes now say “Unknown Niklas from Sweden”. Even at the time I had no idea what it was.

Next up was an act I'd wanted to do for ages. I pretended that the next act was not ready to start. This was a bit of a risk because it was a Chinese dance troupe, and they had very little English, so I never knew how well they understood the artifice. On came Chester, doing a strange dance and singing a strange song. This was unexpected, but I rolled with it. I later realised, though, that I could have done more with it, by copying Bruce Forsyth, who would have looked into the audience with a comical look and a twinkle in his eye. Anyway, Chester came up to join me at the front, and I said “Nice try, Chester, but they're still not ready!” which got a laugh. I then said that I had had an idea: Chester should talk to the ladies and gentlemen while I would run up and down in an ineffectual manner. This is a gag that I have done a hundred times before, but never like this on a stage – just when mucking around with friends. Chester started telling a story about the day he saw a caterpillar Lindy hopping, while I dashed this way and that behind him, indecisively changing course and never going anywhere useful. Frankly, I muffed it. It should have been hilarious, but instead it was just a bit amusing. It needed to be bigger, more committed, and more honest, and more simple. I overcooked the artifice and... well, perhaps one day I'll get to do it properly.

Then on came the Chinese, at first dancing traditional Chinese dance, and then going into modern western stuff, and this was our closing big number. I tried to keep them on-stage for the shim-sham, but language difficulties, together with people's natural instinct to get off a stage once an act is over, meant they not only got off the stage, but also prevented anyone else from getting onto the stage. After the awkward moment, I eventually got a quorum of performers onto the stage and we did the usual shim-sham, which has hitherto, so far as I know, always been the end of the cabaret. We, though, had one one more trick up our sleeves. You remember Chester's instruments? Well the two I described earlier appeared. Our stooge, now clad in a striking magenta suit, played the banjo-like thing, Chester his bass, and a drummer had also been recruited and he appeared with an improvised drum kit made largely from ice-cream tubs. They started playing Stand By Me although I couldn't say for certain that they did so well enough for the audience to recognise it. We had an instrumental recording of this standing by, and this was meant to cut in when I said “If we are going to do this, when we've got to do it right!” but instead it cut in early, but it didn't matter much. I had worked out alternative lyrics to the song, but hadn't had time to memorise them, so had to improvise, but it didn't matter. At this stage on cabaret nights, it is common for the audience to be glad that it is all over, but this audience was going nowhere. I said/sang things along the lines of:

I admonished the crowd for getting so into the groove that mass waving broke out. This was a great audience. The stage manager started closing the curtains. Chester then got a load of us to crawl under the curtain and lie on the stage grinning at the audience. The old ham! He was milking it even more than I was.

You can see a couple of clips of this part of the show here: CLIP ONE CLIP TWO.

Photograph by Isa (@habiba house)

I got a hug from Maja afterwards, so she seemed pleased enough, and Marie (the camp's top boss) said that it was the best she'd seen, which had me worried about the state of her memory.

BIKE LOCKS

There are five hundred bikes for hire at the camp. Each comes with a lock. People cheerfully return their bikes and locks and keys, but too seldom take care to keep the locks and keys together. The result of this is a huge box filled with locks and a fairly large box filled with keys, which is left out for anyone who wants to spend a while matching them up. Apparently, there was a time when a match was rewarded with money or ice cream tokens, but in these tight-belted times the reward is merely the sense of achievement. I was invited to join in the activity and matched seven locks, which took a while.

BOWELS

I realise that the half-dozen or so who read last year's account may be wondering about this issue. Well, I can report that all was operating as normal this time. Possibly even better than at home. So, there you go – it's a funny old world and this issue is sometimes a bit of a drag and at other times no problem at all, and it seems random. Is it all in the head? We may never know.

This was the nicest shower I found. Keeping my dry clothes off the wet floor was made easier by the miniature table and tiny wall hooks.

SAUNA POETRY

Not always sure why, I often took saunas in the morning, after dancing. The experience involved going into a perpetually-damp building and having what were almost always cold showers. During one of these sessions, I was brushing my teeth, and was challenged by a rather pretty blonde Lithuanian, who spoke English like an Australian, to recite a poem on the topic. Straight away I went into A New Stage Reached. She disbelieved me when I revealed the poem to be my own. That can be taken as an insult or compliment. I must have made a decent impression, though, because later a Russian lady who collected poems in a book tracked me down on the Lith's recommendation, and for my contribution, I was rewarded with a fake tattoo of a black rose, which sits ready on my bedside table, waiting for the day.

This is where she often brushed her teeth.

EVENING CLASSES

I probably taught a couple of these. I usually do. I took a few too. Folk dances were well-represented. I learned a Greek dance where we all joined hands in a line and moved to the right in a repeated pattern of slow steps, a couple of fast steps, a wiggle, and then a dramatic low and loud kick (loud, as everyone landed on their right feet at the same time) to set the cycle off again. I did one with Katharina Schüßler, the singing coach, in which many people improvised a choral work. I left quietly in the dark at the end, when we were invited to lie down in the darkness and in some manner wind down from the experience. I usually find that walking out of the tent does the trick for me. There were near enough always a few classes to pick from. Another on Charleston variations I recall, although whether I'll ever recall the moves we did is another matter. I have a chance to, though, as I wrote most of them down.

One thing of note is my memory of what evening meetings used to be like. After dark, the giant marquees at the school have to be electrically lit, and they used to attract very unpleasant numbers of mosquitoes. As a teacher explained something, there would be a steady trickle of claps from those listening, as they combatted the invaders. This is no longer the case. Well done Sweden – the new tax you brought in worked. That reminds me – in past years the trees on the path up to the school used to buzz with bees, but not this year.

One memory from these evening classes is that one of the teachers of one of them was wearing an extraordinary pair of earrings. When I first noticed them, I assumed that I had misread them. Pendant and swinging from her ears were collections of pink letters which seemed to make up some words, and yet surely they could not be saying what I had read. Again and again, when she came near, I tried to reread them, and yet if anything my mistake was confirmed. Eventually, I was satisfied by proximate scrutiny that they did indeed say in bold capitals “MEN ARE TRASH”. I don't intend to run the experiment, but I do wonder what would happen were I to visit the camp sporting the words “WOMEN ARE TRASH”. It is possible that I am merely showing that I am not hep to the latest jive, and her earrings might have been a jovial reference to some modern song lyrics, or an internet meme or something, but I think that the greater likelihood is that she really was offering out a very grave broadcast insult to half the population. Perhaps one day she'll be grateful for all the food men grow and transport for her, or for building her house, or dousing it when it catches fire.

FOOD

I cannot say what things were like before my friend was let go, but when I was there, the menu at the bar was short, never changed, and had only one thing on it involving meat. I did not like this change. It coincided with a notable growth in the popularity of other sources of nourishment to be found near the Kuggan. Lots of people there were opting for fish and chips or Tai food.

BOATING

When bored one day, I wandered down to the boating lake, and there talked to the man who looked after matters there. It was more work than I had guessed. Once or twice a day, he cleared away vegetation from the launching bay's waters.

They left this out in the rain. It suffered a lot. I fear it is near its end, and the Herräng table football camp will have to concentrate more on the dancing, but whether this will be enough to compensate, I cannot say.

WEDNESDAY CULTURAL ACTIVITIES

I didn't do much of these. The desire to do EVERYTHING is no longer with me. I have been to the camp enough times to save my energy and enjoy being away from my computer. I had my video camera with me, but it stayed in its case. There was a class on useful knots that I was interested in, but not much more.

DANCING

Oh yes, there was probably quite a lot of this, although I didn't always do enough of it to feel that I had earned the right to stop and buy a brownie. It is just conceivably possible that my body wasn't as fit as it was before the pandemic, due to the lack of exercise in that period and to nothing else at all. Among my notes I see, “Went back to tent to write this, as band played.” I couldn't be bothered much with crowded floors.

SKINNY DIP

There was a 'secret lake' not very far away, and there was also a 'secret secret lake' known by far fewer people. A lady pulled up in a car and asked whether I wanted to go skinny-dipping in the secret secret lake. Fair enough. Soon, there were two car-loads of us looking for the spot. The journey in the car was a lot longer than I had been expecting, and it became clear that the driver's knowledge of local geography, and general sense of direction might not have been up to getting us there. We dismounted and and walked along what was deemed to be a likely path. We really did walk a long way before the consensus to retreat was reached. Still, it was a walk in the woods and conversation, so no harm done. Back at the vehicles, we decided to content ourselves with the single-level-secret lake.

Photograph by Isa (@habiba house)

Of course, there were others there. One level of secrecy just isn't enough. Fortunately, Swedes are more comfortable than most with nudity, so we got on with it. The water was surprisingly warm. The lake was shallow, and had had plenty of summertime to warm up. There was some photographic record, and I hope that in all of it I am safely hidden by water. I swam out and found a thermometer in the water some distance away, moored to the shore. If memory serves, and do not rely on this, it said that the water was twenty-six centigrade (79F). Some of the people seemed dangerously jovial, and the swim was spoiled a bit by a degree of anxiety that someone might imagine it hilarious to make off with my clothes. All was well enough, though. I then had the age-old dilemma of whether to walk barefoot to the car, and risk standing with my dancer's feet on something sharp, or instead to don socks onto wet feet. I risked the sharpness.

The parade approaching the Blue party. You can see that some people are wearing some blue clothes.

BLUE

The theme for the last Friday night party was 'blue'. Again, an edict had come down massively limiting what could be done with this theme. There was to be no blues music played, nor blues dancing, nor any references to 'the blues' in the sense of anything depressing. In British English, 'blue' is also associated with 'the blue book' which traditionally was the book in which a comedian noted down all his rude jokes, and so 'blue' can mean 'adult' in the sense of including strong language and sexual references. Possibly, that was banned too.

I was asked to contribute an activity to be carried out in front of the Folketshus at the start of the party. Easier said than done. What blue-related thing could this be? The organiser of the party admitted that he had tried and tried to think of anything and had come up blank. At a jazz and dance party, blues music and dance seemed such an obvious and easy fit, that it was almost perverse to exclude them. Can you think of anything? Dougal and the Blue Cat is a reference that an international crowd of youths would not recognise. Blue Lagoon involves nudity and the film was made in 1980 (and 1923, 1949, and a sequel in 1991, but we don't talk about those), and desert island survival games would not be expected.

I went in to photograph the blue decorations. This was the best I came out with.

After some thinking, I came up with one, not terribly good, thing. It was 'Blue Steel', the name of Derek Zoolander's signature facial expression from the film Zoolander (2001 – so still not exactly current). In the absence of anything better, we went ahead with it. I recruited the camp photographer and, when the time came, described the expression to the crowd, and got everyone to pose using it at the same time for a world-record attempt at the most Blue Steel in one picture. The light was terrible, the photographer rushed, and I have not seen the picture. I suspect that it wasn't great. I think the photographer knew that it would be poor, so just decided that getting it over with quickly would be the best for everyone.

The two hostesses, wearing blue headgear, picked out these people as the finalists in the costume competition. Yes - one of them had a blue cagoule.

After that, there was a party. Some people wore blue. The Folkethus ballroom was lit up blue. Whoop-de-doo. You may need to rewatch my video on the 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea party to remind yourself just how amazing these parties used to be.

ON A COCONUT ISLAND

The star of this year's camp was a tall long-haired and ever-smiling Australian tap teacher called Thomas 'Moon' Wadelton. I saw him on the stage several times, and in the pub-night tent. The pub-nights are now very popular, and are far more like shows and less participatory than in previous years. Instead of sitting in the round, the entertainers now all are at one end of the tent, facing an audience that sits in formal rows of seating, and the two groups are quite distinct now, and the whole event feels more like a 'show'. Every night, our star spent a while fronting the band, and would sing On A Coconut Island with the audience providing the backing vocals. Thomas has charm, charisma, confidence, and perhaps one day we'll work together on something. This is perhaps jumping the gun a bit to say, because we've never even had a conversation.

Photograph by Isa (@habiba house)

Photograph by Isa (@habiba house)

In the band were various familiar faces, such as Peter Loggins, who is always great to talk to. He had been spending his days fishing from a boat in the lake – no longer interested in attending the meetings, which was a shame, because he might have been able to correct a lot of inaccurate things said there. He knows more about swing dance history than almost everyone. There was also a washboard player. Now, you may think that the washboard is a simple instrument suitable for those insufficiently dedicated to learn a proper instrument, but this chap took the washboard to a level I had thitherto never witnessed. People demanded that he did solos, and after witnessing one, I knew why.

It did occur to me to try, but I never stepped up on a pub night. I did, though, give it a go once or twice in the afternoon sessions next to the Lost And Found, where less established jazz musicians would nervously take on various jazz standards. I yelled my way expressively through Saint James Infirmary Blues and got a small cheer when I came out with “She might search down Pink Lane forever, but she'd never find a Lindy-hopper like me”.

TLDR

Eventually, it was time to go, and so I went. I had not invested any hope in being invited to anything else. I booked the impressively-expensive bus back to the airport (they fill a few big buses, and at £50 a head must make a mint), and in the usual exhausted state packed my backpack, and departed.

I did not have a great time this year, but I didn't blame the camp. In the main, it's the same old camp, but this time the stars didn't align. It is an act of madness to keep doing the same thing and expect different results, so I shouldn't have been surprised. Reading back through the above, though, I do notice that many things aren't quite as good as once they were, and perhaps all those slight differences add up.

That's not to imply that I wouldn't go again. After I got back, Marie offered me free ice cream were I to go again, probably in the hope that I would compère more shows there. She may have seriously underestimated my capacity for ice cream.