A really short note for the end of the year, including a tiny essay on salsa dancing, YouTube and grief and ageing.

HOW I FELL IN LOVE

Here’s How I fell in love with watching old people dancing, an essay I wrote published in The Guardian today. Because you’re signed up to these notes, you’re entitled to PREMIUM CONTENT! Here’s some of my favourite old people dancing videos on YouTube, as mentioned in the essay (embedding seems to be disabled):

90 year old woman Salsa dancing in NYC

80 year old Cuban woman dancing salsa

Older couple dancing #ganasconcanas (reggaeton special)

UNTIL NEXT YEAR

If you’ve kept up with my notes, you’ll know this year was a momentous one for me. And now, towards the end of December, I’m finding this stage between Christmas and New Year especially strange- a timeless, wonderful wandering between friends and family. I read the news a bit, and the reports from other places I care about are so tragic— the cognitive dissonance between this festive temporary pleasure and reality elsewhere is too great to process properly. My friends, I wish for you, wherever you are: safety, happiness, peace and love. And dancing. Thank you for reading, and till we meet again.