Mistress of None

In my role as semi-retired desperate housewife I have many hobbies, as regular readers will know. Golf, piano, playwrighting, novel writing, weight-watchers and dancing to name a few. I often feel I'd have more success if didn't insist on practising them all at the same time.

Last night we had another dance lesson. We've learnt the hustle, foxtrot and waltz, and are currently attacking the jitterbug. We can't actually do any of them, but it's fun trying and we like to give our instructor a challenge.

Unfortunately last night we had a little audience, as people started gathering for the dance session following our class. It's one thing laughing at yourself, quite another when other people start doing it.

Grumpy actually seemed to thrive on the attention, although it distracted him from counting which meant his dancing was worse than ever.

I was not so secretly pleased about this. In the Weight Watchers race he is streaks ahead of me - he's lost 10lbs in the time it's taken me to lose 5lb. Course there's no point in being a brilliant dancer if your partner is not up to it, so I usually dance badly just to match him, you understand.

However, as we prepared to leave, I was horrified when another instructor complimented Grumpy on his obvious weight loss.

It's enough to drive a girl to drink, which would probably account for my lack of success in the weighting game. However, with enough alcohol I see myself as a rival to Tiger Woods, a concert pianist, William Shakespeare, Jackie Collins, Daniel Barenboim and the entire cast of Riverdance, so I guess you can't have everything.