Scottish Ceilidh Club at Cecil Sharp House

Scottish Ceilidh Club at Cecil Sharp House

20 February, 2009
by: Bexy

It's not often, not ever even, that Friday night meets ceilidh, meets my mates, meets a town hall in North London. But apparently we're the last ones catching on to one of London's best kept secrets. For the uninitiated amongst you, ceilidh, (pronounced kaylie) is a traditional form of Scottish or Irish folk dancing- a bit like the country dancing you may have done at school, remember? But before you roll your eyes and start rolling them around the page for a more exciting review to read STOP! Because this is it.

Last Friday, having changed my shoes and trudged up Parkway, I finally find Cecil Sharp House where, by 6.30 pm, a rapidly inflating queue of twenty has already formed. With tickets at £12.50 a pop, and the queue rapidly growing, so is my intrigue.

At the paying desk a middle-aged man, (who looks like your dad) takes my money, puts it in the metal tin and points out the array of raffle prizes on the trestle table next to him. Flashback church raffle: A packet of cheese biscuits, Iron Bru, Scotch whisky - you get the picture. Once inside, the ten pounds a bottle wine quickly drowns any fears about my two left feet, that and the Greene King ale on tap, I'm at home.

There are three halls in the impressive 1930's listed building, and our ceilidh is held in the Kennedy Hall - a stunning room with a polished wooden sprung floor, a sixty-five foot mural and ambient lighting. An eclectic crowd of about two hundred and fifty has formed and the band, Licence To Ceilidh, on fiddles, flutes, guitars and percussion are warming them up nicely. Any old folkie smells are quickly dispersed by the young blonde and booted caller - Hannah Bright who, (with the patience of a saint) tells us the steps before each dance. What started out as a rather shambolic affair gets miraculously better as we quickly improve as the night progresses. A good, old-fashioned knees up; hilarious and heart warming. At a time when we're all meant to be losing touch with our communities and becoming Orwellian technical misfits, rubbing shoulders with yer fellow London fiddle lovers is a treat not to be missed.

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Bexy