Feliz Primavera

At my tango school, yesterday, you could either pay a fee or bring a plant. The founder of the school had just returned from an extended tour and to celebrate Spring Day, the practica was interspersed with spectacular performances of show tango by the advanced students. Watching tango is no passive affair. We clap to the rhythm, ululate and call ¡Eso! and ¡Esa! (literally this / that, but equivalent to Yes!) at especially original or complex moves. Then, when it's over, everyone kisses everyone and there are heartfelt hugs. Sometimes, tears. It is intense.

All the teachers were afileteado, yesterday. El Fileteado is a popular, decorative art that is typical of Buenos Aires. It bears some of the characteristics of the painting on English canal boats with the flourishes and curlicues of art nouveau. I asked the man doing the painting to paint me too, to show off at the evening's milonga at the Club Independencia. He painted my throat and shoulder with yellow, orange and purple flowers, dew drops and embellishments. Very pretty! So pretty, I made do with a showerless bath, this morning, so I could enjoy it for one more day.

Today was terrific: a day spent at the country house of one of Lili's friends', with about thirty other guests, all local people. We had been invited to an asado (charcoal roast) dinner and there was a sign on the gate saying Bienvenidos a enfasis en tango.

Lili drove. The speed limit here is 130 km per hour, but nobody respects it. The country house was about an hour's drive away from Recoleta, my barrio (neighbourhood). They told me that many of the workers of Buenos Aires live in this region and it takes them up to two hours to get to work - by bus: it can be chastening to learn about the lives of others.

With us were two ladies, fondly reminiscing about learning English many years ago. They came out with a stream of unmentionable expletives with much enthusiasm and asked me to teach them some more. Then, we arrived and Lily parked outside, so everyone could put on their Spring Day gear: hats and scarves covered in flowers or baby birds, the motifs of spring. There was to be a competition and one woman would be chosen by the men to be Queen of the Spring. Being afileteada, I was covered.

When we got there, I noticed there were loads of women and a handful of men. One of the women said that there were far more women in Argentina than men. Just like England, then. They were a jolly bunch with a robust sense of humour and it was a most convivial lunch. Guests would call Arre, arre, arre! to announce they had a joke to tell and just about everyone had one. Half-way through lunch, our host put on a CD and everyone burst into song. I was delighted when two of them were romantic songs I had learned in Madrid as a girl, from my schoolfriends' mother and I was able to join in lustily with the rest of them: Samba de mi esperanza and Corazon, porque no amas. The host was wonderful. He said, You know my house has no door. It really didn't.

The garden was vast. The flora tends to be grey-green in this area and I noticed wisteria, lemon trees, yucca, palms, a fig tree and a variety of parasite plants including ivy. I met some new plants, native to Argentina: a seibo (the national tree of Argentina, which bears red flowers), some nispero and glisina. Our host's five year old grandson enjoyed tearing around the land on his estate buggy and gave me a bracing round of the perimeter on the back of his vehicle.

In the evening, we went to a nearby village for a tango milonguero lesson with a very handsome tango teacher, who had been one of the guests at lunch. The class was in a tiny café, where we watched the end of a private lesson: two teenage cousins were learning tango as a surprise for their grandmother's birthday. We were just three couples, including the teacher and we had a very good lesson in milonguero posture and style. An extremely elderly lady sat looking on: she was the owner's mother and our teacher danced with her at the end of our lesson. May I have someone like him to dance with me when I'm ninety-three, please.