Moves of a dancing queen

If she’s not lounging on the sofa watching endless re-runs of Friends, she’s up in her room doing homework or watching Netflix – pretty standard 14-year-old behaviour.

But when she’s on stage, dancing or acting, it’s like she’s a different child. So much so that me and the boss sit in the audience and think: “Is that really her?”

Last weekend was her dance school’s Christmas show with three performances over two days. As far as we’re concerned, Christmas begins the moment the lights go down and the dancing starts. The hundreds of hours of rehearsals and hundreds of pounds spent on fees and costumes feel like a bargain. The three-hour show flew by in about 10 minutes. It was mesmeric and it was packed out.

I suppose if we danced for 15 to 20 hours a week we’d be as superfit as she is. Daughter #2 spends nearly as much time dancing as she does at school. It’s no wonder she doesn’t get up until noon at weekends, she’s worn out. We got home about half an hour after the Saturday night performance and she sat in a corner, sipping a cup of tea and then went to bed. No fuss, just job done and let’s get ready for back-to-back shows tomorrow.

I may be biased but she’s brilliant. She moves like her shoulders are pegged to a washing line and the rest of her blows in the breeze. It looks effortless but she assures me it takes hours and hours of very hard work to make it look so easy.

Even her big sister, daughter #1, was impressed. And that’s like a five-star review in The Times. Younger siblings reading this, I bet you can count on your thumbs the number of times your big sister or brother said something nice about you as kids. Well, it just goes to show miracles do happen.

Anyway, it can’t have escaped your attention that it’s Christmas Day on Sunday. That’s only three days of panic buying before the shops are shut for one day.

Let’s try to not eat and drink ourselves into Type 2 diabetes and then wonder why our pants and posh frocks won’t fasten on New Year’s Eve. Happy Christmas.