Salsa and the widows

Eusebio elbowed me in the ribs. 'Those women need help.'

'What?'

'Those women. They need help. Look at them.'

I looked at them. He was right, they needed help. 'You do it,' I suggested, but Eusebio pleaded exhaustion. Too much wine, too much food. Yeah, me too. But still. Chivalry and all that.

It was party day in the village. A day to eat, drink and enjoy being a little cluster of people living in close proximity who are mostly happy with that. The summer sun was friendly but fierce and our sports ground was clothed with canvas gazebos sheltering tables, food, drink and most of the villagers.

Over in one corner young Crístofer, who knows about these things, had set up a laptop computer feeding chirpy salsa music into two black loudspeakers perched like vultures on tall poles. He was still sulking over being made to keep the volume below denture-rattling level - 'Hey, chico, some of us want to talk, turn the effing thing down!' - but was otherwise doing a good job of keeping things lively.

There is no moment, at these events, when we all sit down at the tables to start eating, nor any identifiable end - the meal starts when anything edible arrives, and people sit and eat or stand and talk as they wish. A relaxed and fluid feast that lasts all day.

Crístofer's salsa music pervaded the air like an aerosol drug that went straight to the feet, causing involuntary tapping and twitching. Men headed for the beer cooler wiggle-walking in time with the music. People abandoned their plates of chick pea stew or barbecued pork in order to dance, impelled by their hyperactive feet.

Rubén, a twenty-something guy who has hyperactive everything, danced wildly with the kids, some of whom would get sick before much longer.

So we were all having a great time, everything was hunkydory and ticketyboo, until - inevitably - around mid-afternoon someone produced a football. Someone always does. It was probably Rubén but I can't swear to that. And football, as everyone knows, is the world's worst bully, it will claim any amount of space for itself and ruthlessly exclude all non-players.

The lads all joined the game and, even more distressingly, so did some of the lasses. And that was the end of the dancing. Crístofer left his disco station to take up position as centre-half for the Red team.

Thus it was for a few minutes. The football took over. But – here was his big mistake - Crístofer had left the music playing. Under the shade of the gazebos, at the tables, fingers still drummed along with the beat, feet still tapped and twitched. And on the margins of the football game five widows lingered wistfully, swaying their hips. Five women who had lost their husbands some years ago but had not retreated permanently into black mourning, had decided that life was still to be lived. They wanted to keep on dancing.

Eusebio, a man who also believes that life is for the living, recognised that things had slipped out of kilter. 'Go on,' he urged me. 'I'll go if you do,' I offered. Okay. We approached the five widows together, offered ourselves as partners and led them gallantly onto the football field.

Five ladies and two blokes dancing salsa on a football field can mess up the game pretty thoroughly. Nobody minded. They must have known in their hearts that we were right and they were wrong.

The goalie at our end started dancing. The Blue team’s star striker caught the ball in his hands and shoved it beneath his tee shirt, shimmying. The ref retrieved the ball, whistled and sent him off. He didn’t go.

Committed footballers tried to continue the game but they were lost. Down at the far end, the defenders turned their goalmouth sideways, probably the best defence anyone has ever invented.

Meanwhile Bernarda, one of our salsa widows, grabbed a plastic bottle full of fizzy orange and sashayed across the field with it balanced on her head. The game dissolved into chaos and anarchy. This was my kind of football.