DANCING ON THE ISLE OF MAN (Part 3)

November 2005

by Jo Elliott

This is the story of sixteen veils.

It’s a good night for staying home tonight. There’s a “Strong Wind” warning in operation. This morning’s storm has left roads flooded and the odd tree down, and tonight’s, they say, will be worse. Don‘t go out, says the radio. But it doesn’t look too bad yet, and in any case, I can’t stay home. There’s work to be done.

It’s all very exiting. Carol Hall is coming over to the Island in a few weeks to teach us a new style of dancing, the Melaya Lef. This style was invented, so I have been told, by the prostitutes in Alexandria, and it is cheeky, flirtatious, and fun. There’s a catch. (There’s always a catch.) In order to dance Melaya Lef, you need a Melaya. This is a large veil, originally used to wrap yourself in when going out into the streets. It must be about three metres long and wide enough to cover you from chin to ankle, made of opaque and slightly stretchy fabric, preferably black.

Chrissy has four decorated performance Melayas which she brought back from her trip to Egypt. She is keeping one herself and offering the others for sale to club members. But that’s only four, and so far seventeen people have signed up for the workshop.

This is a problem because there are not many fabric shops on the Island, and only one of them sells fabric anything like cheaply enough to make veils on that scale. I have a small amount of stuff, less than a metre, which would be ideal: black, stretchy, and with a nice shine to it, though perhaps a little too transparent. I bought it there over a year ago.

So back I go to the shop, and ask the manger if she has anything like it in stock. No, unfortunately not, that roll was a one-off, left over from a big order from somewhere like Marks and Spencer’s. Chrissy, however, has been luckier. She has returned to her favourite hunting ground, eBay. And there she has found for sale at a ridiculously low price, a whole roll of fabric which sounds just right, a fine black jersey.

It arrived a few days ago, and that is why I am setting out, in defiance of the weather forecast, to drive down to Port Erin to help Chrissy make 46 metres of fabric into veils. Chrissy has a serious sewing room in her house. Her computer and assorted equipment sits on a desk at one end, her sewing machine and overlocker on a table at the other. Enough fabric to stock a small shop is stacked, neatly folded and sorted by colours, on the shelves lining two of the walls. Our particular concern is with the bulky black roll lying in the middle of the floor.

The material is almost perfect: dense black, soft, smooth and stretchy. The idea is that I will cut it into three metre lengths, and Chrissy will overlock the ends. (The sides are selvedges and don’t need doing). Chrissy puts a CD to play soft music on the computer, and we set to work. First the over locker must be set to the right tension. This takes some time and a certain amount of swearing. Chrissy apologises for the language. I say no need, I know machines have ideas of their own. So does this fabric. I pride myself on being able to cut straight by eye, but this fine, slippery stuff is deceptive. I add a few bad words of my own.

Soon we fall into rhythm. Chrissy is hemming the pieces as fast as I can cut them. I find the easiest way to spread out a length is to kick the whole roll over to one end of the room and then back again, unrolling as it goes. I loose my tape measure, then my scissors, borrow Chrissy’s, find them all again, and keep going. The fat roll becomes thinner and thinner, until only a couple of metres are left. A large black heap occupies the centre of the floor. Sorted out, folded and stacked, we count sixteen Melayas, huge and surprisingly heavy. Enough for everyone.

Outside, the night is very dark, but the air is still and surprisingly warm. Fog lies in folds across the tops of the hills. The Island holds its breath, waiting for the storm. And so I make my way home, swinging round the Blackboards, bouncing over the Fairy Bridge, threading carefully through the gathering mist at Santon, happy in the knowledge of a job well done.

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