Dinner Dance

William Overington

This song was written in the autumn of 2010 yet the lyrics were not published in this webspace until Wednesday 19 August 2015.

The lyrics had, however, been posted in 2010 to a forum about gluten-free food.

The lyrics have been found on 19 August 2015 on a web page in that forum.

http://www.dsglutenfree.com/en/community/dsforum/eating-out/2010/08/dinner-dance

Here are the two posts from the thread. When I wrote the first post, I had not thought of writing song lyrics for this situation.


I am interested in creative writing, so here is a scenario. It seems to me to be a scenario that could be typical of what could happen in real life.

Please feel free either to post a reply in the form of a short story or maybe just write on the topic in general. If writing a short story, you are welcome to write from a standing start with your own characters and your own scenario, or you are welcome to treat the text of the scenario as the first part of your own story, as you wish.

The scenario is as follows.

Jane works as a secretary in a large organization that has many departments. Sometimes she meets people from other departments. Peter had been a visitor to the department a couple of times during the year. It had been something of a surprise when he had telephoned her earlier in the afternoon saying that his department was holding a dinner dance at a local restaurant and inviting her to accompany him as his guest. She had said that she was rather busy at the moment and could she ring him back tomorrow morning. Now, travelling home, she is wondering quite what to do. What about her need to have gluten-free food? She must not eat anything with gluten in it, but she did not want to say no because of that. What should she do?

William Overington

17 August 2010

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I was thinking about this thread last Thursday morning and thought of a solution and when I tried writing the lyrics it seemed to all come together!

Dinner Dance Song

Swing along, fast-paced, jazz style

(three lines of music instrumental only as an introduction, same as used to finish, but please read through first so as to enjoy the story)

A lady one day
has a problem
What is she to do?
Asked to a dinner dance
by a nice man
from office twenty-two
The problem is
she needs a meal
that she can safely eat
No gluten-containing ingredients
must be used to prepare her treat

(repeat music of last two lines instrumental only)

What should she say
to the man
when she rings him later today?
She doesn't want
to make a fuss
or embarrass him in any way
Should she tell him the problem
or should she just
say she is busy that day
But why should she let
her dietary needs
make her turn romance away?

(repeat music of last three lines instrumental only)

(Instrumental verse)

So she sends him a link
to this song
so that he knows how her food must be
Perhaps he can try
to sort it out
with the restaurant's Maître d'
Though if it cannot be done
she quite understands
though she would like to say
If he would like
they can go somewhere else
together on another day
Yes, if he would like
they can go somewhere else
together on another day ....

(repeat music of last three lines instrumental only)

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I hope that this song, either as lyrics here or maybe recorded, with a video, might be helpful to some people.

William Overington

26 October 2010

Copyright 2010 William Overington