Get Down Tonight

Across the street from the office building I worked in last year is an underground car park. After parking your vehicle, you’re supposed to take a set of stairs back up to street level rather than walking up the ramp you’ve just driven down in case a considerate BMW driver is having an off day and mows you down because he’s too busy singing along to the Simply Red CD blaring from the stereo. As a warning not to walk up the ramp, the sign below is posted at the ramp entrance with the appropriate wording “No Pedestrians”.

Last week in my new office building I saw this same sign posted on a door with the warning “Unauthorised persons step away from the area and go about your business - nothing to see here” because this is the door to the vast underground caves where we keep all the money paid in charges and fees by customers who, frankly, are kidding themselves if they think any lame lawsuit to reclaim them is ever going to succeed.

But every time I see this sign I think it can mean only one thing… “No Dancing Like Your Dad”. Seriously, stick a 1970s Tennents Lager can (with the “lovelies” on the side) in one hand and a cocktail stick with cheese and pineapple in the other, and you have a fair idea of the view I used to get peering up through a crack in the floorboards from the basement where I was kept when the folks were hosting their monthly “fondue soiree”. If you lean in and listen real carefully, I swear you can still hear the haunting strains of KC (avec Sunshine Band)… “Do a little dance, make a little love…”