I went to the TLC Ball at Winchester Guildhall 2007 on Saturday night. There were three rooms, one each for salsa, swing and Argentine tango. Besides feeling terrified about asking people to dance and feeling guilty about being scared, I quite enjoyed the ball (I used to be more confident but I haven’t danced in a while).

But I do need to say this about the ball: I have never seen so many badly dressed women in my life. Everything was too tight and too shiny. Cleavage threatened to escape their alotted space. There were dress and trousers (!) slits in the wrong places. One girl I’m thinking of would have looked been fine — if only she had stopped before wrapping her grandmother’s aquamarine woollen shawl around her waist.

People say that the English have little sense of style. Was it any worse than I’ve seen in Australia? It must have been. I’m not much of a fashion watcher so I wouldn’t have noticed unless there was evidence of extraordinary bad taste.

To be honest, it might have been an ‘older women at a dance party’ phenomenon and my pattern observations were skewed by a few badly dressed young women.