Aston Hippodrome

I always wanted to learn to tap dance. 
Eventually I persuaded my mother to take me to a dancing school so I could learn.  She found such an academy (aren't mothers wonderful!) It was a big detached house at the top of Manor Road hill, sitting on the corner of the road.  So we went to discuss details and have a look round, exciting!  Then came the blow!  I  had to learn ballet before I could learn tap!  Even to this day I do not understand why.  So it was arranged that this is what we would do and I had to learn silly old ballet.  Every Saturday morning I traipsed up the hill to the school, there was a dance studio and a little hatch to the kitchen where one could buy a glass of lemonade - such luxury for me who only saw pop on special occasions.
Anyhow every week I had lessons and practised at home, no doubt driving each and everyone of them barmy with it all!!!  I had pink ballet shoes, unblocked as I was only learning - I would've been 10 .......... maybe it was to take my mind off 'the phantom'!!

So I progressed, and then my class was told that we would be taking part in the Pantomime to be held at the Aston Hippodrome.  I had no idea where it was but I didn't care - I was going to dance on the stage!!!  It was madness!  Our class would dance as 'rabbits' in part of Cinderella's dream and then a select few would be 'horses' pulling her carriage.  I was among the chosen eight to pull the coach, such an honour, worth all the practise I had put in.  Mam stitched away at my costume - a white satin 'body' with two different hoods and two different tails.  The hood covered our whole head and was in white satin - bit like a balaclava - had big white ears lined with pink for the rabbit and the second one had short ears and long brown wool, as in mane, down the back.  The tails were fastened onto the back of the costume, for the life of me I cannot remember how, but one was a white tuft of cotton wool and the other a long brown tail of wool.  Oh! how we rehearsed, rehearsed, rehearsed and rehearsed, then went to the Hippodrome to rehearse again!  When we arrived on the morning of the performance we were straight into a dress rehearsal and it was drummed into the 'horses' how to pull the carriage while dancing in time to the music.  We were sorted into position and, of course, this little dainty thing had to be one of the back two (!!!) to slow the carriage down if it looked like it was going too fast.   The carriage was to be pulled straight across the stage, enter right and leave left!

Then came the night!
One performance only!
No second chance!
It was bedlam in those dressing rooms, how the adults coped I will never know, parents were not allowed back stage so there was just everyone helping everyone.  Eventually there we were in the wings waiting to go on - excited, smiling, nervous, giggling - and then ...........
onto the stage we hopped, I know we did a dance, and then we hopped off again to much applause. 
WE DID IT!  WE DANCED ON THE STAGE!!
No time to think we had to get back to the dressing rooms and change our outfits to become snow white horses!!  Back in the wings, transformed into horses, we lined up in front of the coach...... and then ........ on we went .......... prancing and dancing ........... the two at the back panicking half way across as they realised that the carriage was not going straight and was heading for the front!!!!  Oh! my goodness!  ever tried stopping a car by standing in front of it?  don't!! 
Thank goodness the curtains closed and the audience did not see the mishap.  Those poor dainty little blondes at the front didn't have a clue!
Anyhow, we had to change back into bunnies and wait for the final curtain.  The peculiar thing is that everyone was singing this song that we had never heard but everyone else assumed we knew!! 
And it was all over!
Mam and Ena collected me out at the front and we came home. 

I had come to a decision ........... I wanted to be a ballet dancer, pink toutou, pink blocked shoes, pink coronet - Sugar Plum Fairy - that was going to be me!!  Tap dancing - forget it!

For Christmas I had a pair of Roller Skates - wonderful  things, didn't fit properly at times but there you go!  I lived in those things, went everywhere I could go.
One evening, Dad asked me to go to fetch the 'fags' for him so off I went.   He called me back - "Don't go on your roller skates" - huh! no chance!  off I went.

I can remember going round the corner trying to avoid the dip in the pavement, which I knew was there, and then I was in the gutter with some man leaning over me asking if I was alright.  Then Mam appeared and I was uploaded into an ambulance, and 'blue lighted' all the way to the Accident Hospital.

Eventually it was decided that I was ok but had fractured my right leg and had to be plastered up from toe to thigh.  Dad didn't speak to me when I got home but that was Dad, took a couple of days and ............ I still had to have a telling off ..............but then it was back to normal. 

I couldn't be encouraged onto those crutches, when I stood up the blood rushing down my leg caused so much pain, there was no way.  Eventually I was cajoled by my Mam saying that she had arranged for me to go back to school but only if I could manage to get around.  Back to school, not lying on the sofa, not being on my own anymore ........... I managed those crutches and, as posted on an earlier post - did I have good time at school!!

When I eventually was fit enough to go back to ballet, I had fallen so far behind it was decided that I would have to join another class, probably starting again.  Too much ..... the lights and music, pink toutou were all put away, although I did keep my ballet shoes for a while .........
now  I wish I had stuck with it but then ..... I am no balerina, never could've been ........... but when I go to the Theatre to see the 'Nutcracker' and the Sugar Plum Fairy dances onto the stage ....................