From that heart of entropy, La Viruta, back to our orderly friend, Salón Canning, where as A pointed out, every couple seemed to have just the right amount of space around them, and not a collision in sight.

The address of Salón Canning is 'Scalabrini Ortiz 1331' - and two out of three times we've caught a taxi there, when we say the address, the taxi driver exclaims "Ah, capicúa". When I asked our intercambio idioma friend about why palindromes would be so important to taxi drivers (one pointed out that Menem was like this too), she explained that people here (older people than herself, she thought) are very superstitious (cábala), and so anything like that was good luck.

Spanish word for the day: reversible = capicúa

Anyway, Salón Canning was the milonga where J suggested we first meet, and we met him there again last night. We've been there one other night, to try out a class there.

I hated the class. The teacher was patronising, and taught in figures, breaking the class into halves to show the men and women seperately. A and I both dislike this kind of teaching - it's not instructive to do something without your partner; you just have to learn to do it again, with them. But more importantly, the ladies memorize this figure, so they don't follow the man's lead, and the man doesn't need to lead properly, because the lady's doing it anyway. Also, frankly, I'm dubious about learning form a woman. This is not sexism; I doubt that she ever leads anybody in a milonga (it's just not here, as far as I can see), so how can she teach me something I can use?

Anyway, I also hated it because there are too many people in the class for there to be enough room to actually do the figure, and people didn't seem very forgiving about the inevitable collisions that occurred.

But the real reason I hated it, I reluctantly confess, is that my dancing was shit. With suddenly alot of things to think about, I couldn't lead my way out of a paper bag. I changed partners several times, and I was always the lady's last choice, preferable only to sitting out. Some of them were gracious about my ineptitude, but by the end of the class I was wholly sick of being the stupid gringo who couldn't dance and couldn't speak Spanish either.

The class rolled into the milonga. With a minor adventure making myself misunderstood at the bar, my mal humor was spiralling. I left to have dinner (and a sulk), leaving A to have some dances that I think she been sorely hankering for, without interference from me, her glowering compadre.

After some stern pulling-of-myself-together, and some pizza, I returned to Canning but it was no good, I just didn't feel like dancing. I might have snivelled a little. Maybe.

Anyway, the last time we were there, with J, he talked about the music a little. Conversation with him is always a bit stop-start, but I'd like to learn a way in, because apart from being actually very helpful, he's got a few interesting facts about the music that I think are worth knowing - for example, he was pointing out a part of the music (a tango I know fairly well, although the name escapes me right now...) where change from 4-time to a 3-3-2 beat. I know I've heard it and liked the feel, but I'd never realized it was a time-signature change. I don't know exactly what I'll do with this little tidbit - but I'm sure I'll figure out something one day.

One day, hopefully soon, I'll pluck up the courage to ask J how to go about learning to play the bandoneón. Hopefully...