This month Greenpeace Edinbugh held a foot stompin' ceilidh and celebration of our national bard Robert Burns in The Counting House, Nicolson Street. Despite the wild Scottish weather ( seems even wetter these days... ) there were plenty of enthusiastic dancers of all ages, including one of our iconic and unique furry Arctic friends, and his antipodean penguin pal.
The Robert Fish Band were brilliant, playing such lively music it was impossible to sit still, and keeping us all right with the steps, twirls and claps. The very cute and talented little highland dancers from Dansation dance school roused hearty clapping along and thunderous applause. It was great to see the next generation keeping Scottish culture alive and kicking and a great to hear such a diverse audience enjoying it so much !
As it was so close to oor Burn's birthday we had a few songs kindly performed by Fiona Thomson who was brilliant and sang the songs in a truely heartfelt way, making them all the more meaningful by first telling the story of the song and and how it related to Burn's life.
Just to add some polar excitement to the usual Greenpeace raffle, tickets were were drawn by local celebrity Professor Pongoo. He is the only politically motivated penguin to ever stand for true democracy in an Edinburgh By-Election and beat both the Lib Dems and the Green party. If other penguins could speak they would surely join the Professor in calling for real action against climate breakdown and a socially just world.
In all, it was a great night, everyone seemed to get the hang of the moves by the end, even the polar bear who was much loved and petted by the children there and clearly enjoyed a wee jig. The support for Greenpeace was fantastic and raised much needed funds for campaigning to save our forests, our oceans and the Arctic.
I hope everyone will join us again, once the bruised toes have recovered, as it was a night that definitely should be repeated !
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