Katharine Buchanan
Katharine talks about dances between the wars

Katharine with her husband, her father and evacuees they housed during World War Two

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Yes, we had dances. Brothers of our friends and they would bring a friend at the Atalanta in Woking. That was the tops!

Yes, it’s got a sort of nice entrance and you went into it. There was a little recess I think where your coats or something - it was all full length ballroom stuff and our friends had these dances there and we finally had our - they call it the coming out one. It wasn’t formal, it’s just we were just old enough to have it there - otherwise, you had it in your own home.

Well, all these people came in rather shy. The men always stood on one side and the girls on the other and then the music would start up and the men would sift through and ask you to dance. But it started with a Paul Jones, always – you know what a Paul Jones is? You stand around in a big circle and the men are on the outside and the girls are on the inside in a big circle, and they go this way and then the music stopped, you’re opposite somebody and then you dance with them and that was it, and that got you mixed up. You did that for half an hour and that was the way and we learned to dance. We had some private lessons actually; we were lucky, my mother got that with six or eight friends of ours.

Well, it was ordinary waltz, fox trot, quick step, tango and then the valetta – and one we called the snow dance, the one where you’d stamp your feet and knock the snow off, that was the idea, I can’t remember what it was called. But it was very semi-formal to start with but always there was a break with something different. All the men had to take off one shoe and throw it in a pile and then when the music started, they had to scramble and get the shoes they wanted – something like that – a childish sort of beginning to mix us up. That was one of the ways and then the statue dance, that was always - the music went on and when it stopped, you stood still and if anybody moved, they were out and it went on till there was only one person and they got a prize.

Well no we never went to a public one, never, until the war, and then everybody did. The war changed all this, all that sort of thing, it knocked down a lot of fences, which was good.