Last weekend, thanks to an invitation from a dear friend, a group of us braved the Silent Disco in Winchester Cathedral. By the time you read this, I should be able to walk properly again.

To be honest, dear Reader I was always a bit nervous about the event.  This wasn’t just because, I’d not been out for a girls’ night in Winchester since 2019.  I accept I’ve become extremely boring and need get out more. But was this the right event for us, I pondered? One person was still recovering from a hip operation. On the morning before, I had emergency physio for lower back pain. It’s not the best start to going ‘out out’ when you take the edge off with an ibuprofen rather than a rum and coke.

I also had serious misgivings about the venue itself. Could we really let go with abandon, in the sacred space of Winchester Cathedral? A haven of tranquillity and peace for hundreds of years, wasn’t this a profanity? The advice on the website was to wear trainers not to damage the tiles…Holy fit flops! Would I be able to jump around in this hallowed place?

I was in for an almighty shock before I went through the doors. Silent discos aren’t at all silent! Sure, everyone wears headphones and no sound blasts out from speakers. But as we approached the giant hall - all its seating removed - a strange, muffled primordial chanting ebbed and flowed. Hundreds of young people, in a kind of slo-mo murmuration, were singing along to what they were hearing. But with a choice of channels, they all heard different songs…

We also quickly realised we were a lot older than almost everyone there.

It was surreal. The Giant Moon exhibit loomed large above. The Cathedral illuminated by multi- coloured headphones.  ‘Very superstitious,’ Stevie Wonder sang into my headset.  No time for any academic debate about how deeply ironic it was hearing that, in a building consecrated to end that sort of thing… We  just had to get stuck in and get on down! Everyone seemed to having a blast.

At times I struggled if I’m honest.  At one point, I had Beyonce in my ear rhetorically asking: ‘Baby can you handle this? Is my body too bootilicious for you?’ I looked down whilst interpreting the music (make of that what you will) to find I was on top of The Reverend Edward Salter. His memorial plaque read died 1912. If he wasn’t turning in his grave by now, he was certainly getting jiggy with it.  It was hard to move to a safer spot. The nave area looked feral; a terrifying medieval mosh pit to my middle-aged sensibilities. To my right, one young woman was doing some very strange movements over a wine bottle. A small crowd quickly gathered.

But I persevered. I ‘Pumped up the Jam’ like the best of them. I ‘Flash Danced’. I obediently went ‘Back Once Again to the Renegade Master’. I learnt it helped to face away from the Jane Austen memorial.  

However, I was soon tested to breaking. The DJ interrupted with the kind of challenge anybody sober on a dance floor dreads: ‘ I bet no one in a cathedral, under a moon, has done a giant Conga. C’mon Winchester…’

Perhaps it served me right, for attempting The Macarena immediately afterwards.  I felt my knee go. Was it the hardness of the flag stones? Or the revenge of Robert Crawford I was now jumping on?  I improvised. But it’s not the best of looks, dancing to a medley of Grease, using only your upper body. I looked like the Tin Man from the Wizard of Oz.

I limped out at 9.30pm when the music stopped. Touchingly, most of the young audience stayed on, singing and swaying to their generational anthems.

Who says the devil has all the best tunes.