When I’m not able to make it to Buenos Aires, I nominally budget for six tango festivals a year. So far this year that has encompassed Sheffield, the summer Feast (in lieu of the spring one) and Cheltenham.

To come are the October and December Feasts, and since I’m not counting a random single night of a marathon, that left a gap I was able to fill with what I guess I’d have to call an almost-festival …

I say ‘almost’ because the Septonathon comprises four milongas rather than the more typical six or seven, and it’s technically not a festival at all – it’s a series of individual milongas you can attend on an ad-hoc basis.

I’ve attended the occasional individual Eton milongas before, but not often because travel from London is a PITA. I rented a car to get there on one occasion and very much regretted it (three hours on the M25 car-park), and the train journey is inconvenient on the way out and even more so on the way home.

I decided the only sane way to do it was to make a weekend of it, staying at a local hotel or Airbnb, so that’s what I did this time. I got a hotel in Datchet, and my cunning plan was to bring my Brompton so I could cycle the couple of miles to and from Old Windsor. The weather gods found this idea amusing.

I left my bike at home. Fortunately Charles and Kate very kindly provided a taxi service.

A hotel in kit form

The hotel also proved quite interesting.

It was one of those ‘rooms above a pub’ places, though as far as I could see there was no actual pub bit left. The receptionist was very friendly and showed me to my room. A short while later, I realised I had a desk but not a chair. After checking inside the wardrobe and behind the curtains, no chair revealed itself, so I returned to reception and one was duly delivered to my room.

I wandered out to get a sandwich, returned to my room to eat it and discovered that neither bedroom nor bathroom had a bin. I returned to reception and one was delivered.

The evening was quite chilly and the radiator was not radiating (you had one job …), so I returned to reception to request a heater. When this was arrived it had both a temperature dial and a fan speed switch despite having no fan. Turning both up to maximum provided about as much heat as a fridge bulb.

The final hotel entertainment was a wall light that could be switched off from a switch next to the door. Which also cut power to both bedside lamps. Perhaps electricity is a relatively new arrival in this part of the world and they haven’t quite figured it out yet.

I’m pleased to say that a bed, shower, sink and loo were all included as standard.

Breakfast was not, so mornings (for rather loose values of the term, you understand) began by wandering to a cafe for breakfast.

On Saturday, this was a traditional fry-up one next to the station. The food was excellent, the overly loud conversation from a local gentleman of a certain age somewhat less so. You know nothing good is coming when a monologue begins “If you believed the Guardian and the BBC,” and what followed fully lived up to expectations; I shall be merciful and spare you the details.

Sunday saw me heading to the amazing 50Nine. This was one of the more expensive breakfasts I’ve had outside of a hotel, but it was worth every penny! Smoked salmon, poached eggs, spinach, sourdough toast, avocado, beans and the most convincing vegetarian sausages I’ve ever had in my life (Plant Pioneers Cumberland Shroomdogs).

Adding fresh-made juice and coffee didn’t leave much change from £30, but take my advice and splash out if you find yourself in the area.

Becoming a bow tie guy

I’ve always been jealous of those tangueros who are somehow capable of dancing in a three-piece suit and tie; were I to attempt this, I’d be very quickly reduced to a liquid. My personal best for dancing in a jacket was three tandas on a chilly winter’s day.

However, I recently discovered that I’m capable of dancing in a fully buttoned-up (linen) shirt with a bow tie. This attracted a great many compliments.

Prior to tango, I wore a bow tie once a year, on New Year’s Eve. This was sufficiently infrequently that I had to look up a tutorial on the internet on each occasion. I’d begin tying it sometime in mid-December in order to be done before midnight on NYE.

Having made my discovery, and being a sucker for compliments, I promptly ordered four different ones and decided I should set about actually learning how to tie them rather than having to do bow tying by numbers each time. A few weeks ago, I practiced on one of them about a dozen times, and by the end of it convinced myself that I had the hang of it.

Fast-forward to Friday night in my hotel room half an hour before the opening milonga. All seemed to be going reasonably well until I tried to begin the tightening process. You end up with a loop front-right and left-back, and a flap front-left, and right-back and then alternate between pulling on the two loops and the two flaps as it very slowly tightens. Or, in this case, falls apart.

I rewatched the tutorial video and couldn’t see anything I’d done wrong, so tried again. It fell apart again. No exaggeration, I repeated this process three times.

By a sheer process of elimination, I tried reversing one of the steps. It worked. It appeared to contradict the tutorial, and I’m quite convinced it was the opposite of the process I’d successfully used before. But hey, it worked.

And the Saturday afternoon, evening, and Sunday editions (which didn’t require tutorials):

Tune in for next month’s exciting episode.

Village halls transformed

If you’d told me in my pre-tango days that I’d end up spending many hours in various village halls dotted around the country, I’d have suspected you had an excellent source of recreational chemicals.

I once went to Tango Secrets with Einat, who needed to arrive an hour early to set up her shoe salon, and got to witness for myself the process of transforming a very mundane hall into a magical-looking place. It really is a miraculous achievement, and I salute all those organisers who pull it off so beautifully.

The photo below was just before the opening tanda of the Saturday evening, the additional decorative item being my own choice of recreational chemical.

My theory was that I’d find some fellow fans to share it at some point on one of the two evenings. As it turned out, I didn’t have a moment to even think about opening it, so it was carried from home to Datchet to Old Windsor to Datchet to Old Windsor to Datchet to Old Windsor to home. My bottles of wine are sometimes out there living their best lives.

Where was I? Oh yes: village hall transformations. Organisers everywhere, please know that all this hard work is very much appreciated.

DJs without mercy

All four DJs had absolutely no mercy. Pretty much every time I decided it was time to take a rest and sit out a tanda I’d find myself standing right back up again.

Charles kicked off the party on Friday evening. I can’t discuss the lack of Pugliese tandas as that’s the subject of ongoing legal action (and no, a Salamanca tanda, lovely as they can be, is not a lawful substitute – there’s case law on this), but it was an otherwise gorgeous set, with a great balance of rhythmic and lyrical tandas.

Kyla Mares picked up the baton on Saturday afternoon. I’ve loved her DJing at the Feast, and did so again here. Again, really good balance, perhaps slightly favouring lyrical music, which is always a winner in my books.

Another Feast favourite Richard Slade took over in the evening, and of course needs no introduction. Wonderful selections with the added bonus of editorials:

(I can confirm that the Tanturi tanda concerned was, without question, a cutie.)

Sunday was a single 6-hour milonga DJ’d by Kristof Elst. I’d first encountered his DJing a couple of years ago at Warm Embrace in Antwerp so knew I was in for a treat – and that was indeed the case. But his set did also raise an interesting question …

Kristof is a bigger fan than I of some of the earlier music, and yet I found myself dancing to, well, pretty much every tanda. Was that because I was just on such a high from the event and the followers that even music that wouldn’t normally pull me from my seat did so? Had he found the earlier songs I actually enjoy? Or has he and a few other subversive DJs conspired to change my view of it? Answers on a postcard …

I love the projection system used at the event, where you can see the current (or immediately upcoming) tanda, as well as the next one. That’s really handy for planning breaks (ha!) or for positioning myself sensibly to cabeceo particular followers for particular orchestras. Kristof was the exception to the ‘next tanda’ rule, but as I saw him at work literally composing a tanda song-by-song on the fly, that’s not at all surprising!

Some DJs who like early songs seem to think you have to spend the first hour playing them, but not Kristoff. Indeed, the Di Sarli and Fresedo tandas he played very early on were so delicious I had to ask him to share them with me.

Followers do from time to time ask whether I’ve ever considered DJing, and for some reason I was posed the question quite a few times over the course of the three days. My answer is always the same: I’m pretty sure I could put together a good set for a single milonga. What I wouldn’t be able to do is come up with a different one next time – that’s what requires the in-depth musical knowledge.

Best tango origin story ever!

Kristof confirmed the story of how he got into tango in the first place, and I think it must qualify as the best origin story ever.

His girlfriend Maria danced, but he didn’t. He secretly took lessons while she remained completely oblivious. Finally, he revealed the secret at a milonga by inviting her to dance.

They are now married. I mean, she’d kind of have to marry him after that, right?!

A wealth of wonderful followers

It was no surprise at all to find many familiar faces there, but it was quite amazing to see so many of my favourite followers from various parts of the UK all in the same place at the same time! There was also an international contingent from the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy among other places, some of whom I’d danced with in Cheltenham.

All this left me with a dance card the length of the Amazon, and the challenge of trying to spot where people were sitting and build a mental map was bigger than usual. By the end of the weekend, I still hadn’t managed to dance with everyone I wanted to – and that’s despite dancing the vast majority of tango and vals tandas from the first one on Friday evening to the last on Sunday evening!

I managed to include some new-to-me followers in the mix, and didn’t have a single disappointing dance. The quality of the following was just beautiful.

I generally use milonga tandas as a break, but …

Some followers and I seem to disagree about my milonga-dancing abilities. My head has all this double-time stuff it wants to do while my feet are ‘nah, we’re good with single-time, thanks.’ Actually, my kitchen-practice-feet are ok with double-time, it’s my milonga feet that don’t want to play. So I feel I’m not really up to the task, but I have certain followers who don’t share this view and physically drag me onto the floor for them.

Actually, I can’t even blame a follower for the first one – it was my neck and my eyebrows. I was all set to sit quietly and sip my tea when I found my neck swivelling toward one of said favourite followers and my eyebrows raising in a questioning fashion. I swear I wasn’t consulted.

Thinking about it, double-time isn’t my challenge, as the lovely Rodriguez foxtrot on Sunday demonstrated – it’s switching back-and-forth between the two.

Busy, but superb floorcraft

Eton milongas are known for their excellent floorcraft, Charles employing a sniper team to take out offenders, and this was again the case.

The floor was often extremely crowded, the outer ronda especially, but almost every leader was more than able to lead a dance within the couple’s own space, advancing around the ronda when a slot opened up.

I was sat at a table near the kitchen with (the other) Charles and Kate, and rather quickly learned not to start a tanda there! With so many people entering the floor at the three kitchen area entrances, plus the entry doorway, the couples had to squeeze tighter and tighter, and it could take several months to progress as far as the first corner.

Of course, there are always floorcraft exceptions even in the best-behaved ronda, and I had to laugh at one of them. There were two leaders I knew from elsewhere, and let’s just say I try not to enter the floor anywhere near either of them. One tanda I’d got us perfectly positioned between two leaders with impeccable floorcraft. The first tanda had just started when one of the … less impeccable leaders barged onto the floor immediately in front of us without so much as a glance. Then, before the end of the first song, the second one cut in between us and the couple behind by switching randomly from the inner to outer ronda. We’d gone from being safely between two excellent leaders to trapped between two of the worst! It was just too perfectly funny to even be annoyed by having to play dodgems for the rest of the tanda.

Speaking of the kitchen, that was another place where floorcraft skills were required: hoardes of people simultaneously navigating the mix of tea, boiler, milk, biscuits, and Sarah’s delicious home-baked cakes. I’m supposed to be on a diet, but I figured calories probably don’t even operate that far west.

The Sunday was still popular but a little quieter. It was great to have a little more room, including the occasional opportunity to walk!

Over too soon!

I really didn’t want the event to end, though it was perhaps just as well it did as I was completely brain-dead by the last couple of tandas. I danced the final one with a follower friend who does a little leading, and said she has no idea how leaders keep coming up with inspiration for all those hours; I observed that by this stage I most assuredly didn’t.

I was going to just miss the hourly train from Datchet. Atul had turned up for the day and was travelling via Slough, so we shared an Uber there. A fast train took us directly to Paddington, where we switched to a very crowded Elizabeth Line. By this point I apparently looked as exhausted as I felt as I was – for the first time in my life, I swear – offered a seat by someone. Or maybe it was the bow tie dangling loosely around my neck by this stage.

Actually, they may have had a point. Crawling out of bed the following morning, I felt like I was about 107.

The one disappointing note was the lack of role balance. I’m told it’s usually better, but this one could definitely have benefited from a dozen or so additional leaders. I didn’t do any following myself. While I do agree in principle with those dual-role dancers who argue I don’t need to feel guilty about taking two leaders out of the equation, I still feel it’s not ideal under these circumstances.

Otherwise, it was an absolute joy. I’m already trying to figure out how I might make it to the extended xmas edition.

Finally, I took a few photos on the Saturday night. (Yes, they were all taken during milonga tandas, why do you ask?) Click/tap to enlarge. If there’s a photo of you that you’d rather weren’t included, just email me.