A man looks out his window to take in a cold sunlit Thursday afternoon as he contentedly sups on a cup of sweet tea. In the building across the street he can see people going about their lives. An old lady tends to her window box, a guy and his girlfriend heatedly point fingers at each other and gesticulate wildly, probably exaggerating every misdemeanor each other ever committed. A teenage girl sits with her back to the window. Her MSN can be seen filling up with gossip and flirtation on her computer screen. In the next window there’s a woman. She seems to be staring at a fixed point in front of her, just in front of her window. She’s bouncing around like a nutter but in a very small space, almost as though she were practicing some kind of amateur Irish dance in an invisible box. The man continues to watch her and ponders what a strange bunch humans are, as he takes another sip of tea.

I, for only the second time in my life, have taken to the dancemat. I’m not good at DDR. By not good I mean that I have two left feet and terrible rhythm but I’m a trier and God loves a trier, so they say. The first time I gave DDR a chance was about 7 years ago. It was brief and ended in my sister and I crying with laughter. I’ve just bought myself Dancing Stage Universe on the 360. There I was, on a cold Thursday afternoon, on my own, just me and the mat, in front of the TV at the window, coffee table thrown aside. What’s great about the game is that for a change it’s not aimed at the spritely young experts you might find at an iSeries event. It has a baby mode for people like myself who are a little ‘hard of stepping’ and you’re not punished for not being able to start on the easiest mode.

There are also, of course, some easy gamerpoints to be garnered from a bit of leaping around and as we all know I’m a sucker for a cheap point. But I can genuinely say I’ve enjoyed my time jumping around my house at the window, with the strange guy across the road staring at me. I might even have a go on the big DDR machines at the Frag Doll forum meet up in January at the Trocadero.