A letter from a reader

At 64, I had spent twenty years minding everybody's handbags while the band played

My granddaughter set this computer up for me two Christmases ago, and until tonight I had only ever used it for the weather and the crossword. So I should say at the start that I am not a writer, and I have never been one for telling other women what to put on.

But three women asked me about a dress on a beach in Darwin last Thursday, and Jenny from over the road says that if I do not write it down she will, and she will get it wrong. So here it is, written down once.

Des and Maureen were our camping friends when the kids were small. Twenty-odd years ago they packed up and moved to Darwin, and every year they ask us up and every year we say next year. This year we finally went, for a week at the end of October, which Des calls the build-up and Graham calls the inside of a kettle.

On the Thursday they took us to the sunset market at Mindil Beach. Food stalls on the grass, a band under the trees, and everybody down on the sand to watch the sun go into the sea. I have been to a hundred things like it. And at every one of them, when the music starts, I know exactly where I will be.

Somebody has to mind the handbags.

That has been my line for twenty years. Weddings, fiftieths, the practice Christmas party, New Year's Eve at the bowls club. Everybody gets up, and I stay at the table with the bags and the half-finished drinks, smiling like I would rather be there.

I did not decide to stop dancing. Nobody does. It just happens, one tight waistband at a time.

How it happens

Somewhere after fifty, your good clothes stop being made for moving. The trousers are fine standing up and murder sitting down. The nice top rides up the moment you lift your arms. The one good dress is either tight enough that you are thinking about it all night, or short enough that you would need to hold it down.

So you dress for sitting. It is sensible. It looks perfectly nice in the photos, as long as the photos are of you sitting down.

And then the band starts, and your husband looks over, and you shake your head and pull the handbags a little closer, and you tell yourself you did not want to anyway.

Then Lyn sent me a video

What changed my mind was Graham's sister Lyn. She is seventy-one and lives in a villa at Mittagong, and in September the village had a spring dance in the community hall. Lyn sent me a video. There she was in the middle of the floor in a strappy midi dress with a big bold print on it, skirt swinging, doing something she swears was the twist.

I rang her and asked where on earth it was from. She told me a small Australian boutique called Thompson Sydney. Then, before I could say anything about the straps, she said, Di, I am seventy-one. If I waited until my arms were ready, I would never have got up at all.

The one I chose is called the Elowette. It is a cream midi dress with two rows of blue sardines swimming across the skirt, little columns of blue daisies down the bodice, and a deep cobalt border at the hem scattered with tiny white flowers and fish. Graham said it looked like a fish and chip shop at the seaside. He meant it nicely, I think.

It sits neatly through the top, then a full, gathered skirt falls from the waist to just below the middle of my calf. When you turn, it swings out. When you stop, it falls straight back into place.

I will be honest about the straps, because I would want to know. They are thin, and the shoulders are bare. At sixty-four I thought about that for a good while before I ordered. In the end I took a light white shawl of my own, which is what I would have done with anything strappy.

What happened at the market

It was thirty-three degrees at six o'clock in the evening, and the shawl lasted as far as the first plastic chair. I wore the Elowette with flat tan sandals and nothing else in the way of fuss.

Three women asked me about the dress before the sun had gone down. The first was a woman behind me in the laksa queue, who wanted to know if I had bought it up here. The second was the young girl on the mango smoothie stall, who asked while she was finding me a straw. The third was Maureen.

Maureen has known me for thirty-five years. In all that time I have never heard her say a word about anybody's clothes, good or bad. When the band started up on the grass, Graham held out his hand, and I did not even look round for the handbags. Maureen watched us for a whole song. Then she said, Well, Di. I did not know you still had that in you.

What I noticed more than the compliments was that I forgot about it. Nothing rode up when I lifted my arms. Nothing needed holding down. I danced three songs in a row, which Graham says is a personal best since the eighties, and the skirt went out and came back every time like it knew what it was doing.

On the Saturday I wore it again for dinner on Des and Maureen's back verandah. Des put the radio on after the prawns, and nobody had to ask me twice.

Three things I have learned since

One. It was never my dancing. It was my clothes. I had spent twenty years thinking I had gone off it. I had not. I had just been dressed for sitting down.

Two. A full skirt is a kindness. It moves with you instead of against you, and it gives you something to do with your hands, which at our age is half the battle on a dance floor.

Three. Bold is easier than plain. I always thought a print like this would be too much on me. It turns out the sardines do the talking, and I just get to enjoy the evening.

About the price

I will be honest, the price is what made me suspicious.

The Elowette is $78.95. It was $158.00.

My first thought was that there had to be a catch, because I have paid more than that for an outfit I wore once to a wedding and spent the whole night sitting in.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is nobody in the middle taking a cut, and they run a spring sale to move the season's stock. I read the reviews before I ordered, the way I imagine you are doing now. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if anything made me trust it more. One woman from Katherine had written, “It was forty degrees at my granddaughter's engagement party and I was the only one at my table who still looked fresh at ten o'clock.” That was the one that decided it for me.

Maureen, I am told, ordered hers before our plane had left Darwin.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sitting on the back verandah with a cold drink and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If you have a wedding, a fiftieth or a Christmas party coming up this summer, and you already know you will be the one at the table minding the bags, it is worth ten minutes of an evening to go and have a look.

Not because a dress will change your life. It will not. But there is something about getting up when the music starts, and not thinking about what you have on for a single second, that I had quietly given up on. I would not want you to give up on it too.

Two practical things. The spring sale is on now and the middle sizes go first. And if, like me, you are not sure about bare shoulders, bring your own wrap. You may well find it ends up on the back of a chair.

Twenty years of minding the handbags. Graham can mind them now.

Dianne