I suppose it’s a bit late to be reporting on something that happened on Valentine’s Day, but since February 14 fell during the Great February Yankee Fog Silence of 2006, I hope you’ll indulge me.
Lauren and I spent Valentine’s Day swing-dancing in the underground bunker from which Winston Churchill ran the British war effort. Whether or not the PM ever suspected that one day, his top-secret enter of military operations would be one of London’s best museums, and that this museum would host a Valentine’s Day dance, I like to think that he would have approved.
The band was terrific, playing all the swing classics you’d want them to. And then, well into the evening, when everybody was loose from the dancing and the bar, the singer told everybody to gather in a circle and follow the lead of the dance instructor.
And then the band launched into the hora.
Based on their hora-dancing abilities, the other couples there had been to few if any Bar Mitzvahs, but they gamely followed the instructor’s lead. The result, I can safely say, was the single-finest hora ever danced in Winston Churchill’s underground war bunker.