Ballerina assoluta vestibulata

Last night, a trip to Sadlers Wells to see Mathew Bourne’s version of Swan Lake, the one in which the swans are played by hot semi-naked men instead of anorexic chicks in tutus. I am no expert on ballet so will spare you any critique, apart from to say it was stunning and moving and made me cry.

Whilst I was being stunned and moved and, like, so identifying with all that fabulously tragic, forbidden love going on all over the place, my mind was wandering at the same time back to my days as a young girl in the Lake District.

Yes, dear reader, I spent every Monday night between the ages of 4 and 13 in a working men’s club next door to the Sellafield nuclear power station, prancing in pink net. My pointe shoes were always sticking to the beer that had been spilled on the dancefloor over the weekend but as far as I was concerned it was the height of sophistication.

So far, so Billy Elliot. Except that I was rubbish at ballet. I could recite all the positions in a perfect French accent but I couldn’t make my arms look graceful. It didn’t help that from the age of 5 onwards I wore thick glasses with plastic rims in a shade that can only be described as shit-brown and sported a haircut inflicted by my dad because he was the only one who could hold me still and cut at the same time; a technique perfected over many years of shearing sheep.

Once a year we had to go to an old theatre somewhere near Wigan to do exams. I quite liked the journey because we got to eat egg sandwiches on the way, but once we arrived I hated it. You had to go on stage, alone, and a thin, cross-looking woman would bark out commands while you put your arms and legs into the positions, then she would play something classical on the piano whilst you leaped around a bit, then you had to curtsey and squint into the darkness, waiting for a voice that came from somewhere in the stalls, in an accent that was so refined that I would have had trouble understanding what she said, if it weren’t for the fact that she always said the same thing: ‘Pretty dress. Nice smile. Pass.’

Even at the age of seven I knew she didn’t mean it. I had an old tutu that my mother had bought at a church jumble sale and a smile like an old age pensioner because most of my milk teeth had fallen out and not grown back yet. I also knew that when she really thought people were good she said things like ‘stylish footwork’ or ‘lovely arms,’ like she did to Sarah Millington, who had blonde hair and a mother who wore patent leather court shoes. She had one of those pink wrap-around cardigans to wear when she was warming up. I lusted after that cardigan. I lusted after Sarah Millington as well but West Cumbria in the 70s was no place for that kind of thing so I kept quiet.

When I was twelve, as if my new tits weren’t enough of an impediment, our teacher Mrs Wrangles (the love-child of Margot Fonteyn and Freddie Krueger), decided that I wasn’t allowed to wear my glasses during the group dance that we had to perform at the end of every exam session. Apparently they looked wrong. I told her that I was practically blind without them but she wouldn't listen. When I blundered onto that stage I knew there was no way I’d be getting off it again without some travesty of justice taking place, which it did, of course, when I went the wrong way during the pas-de-chat, bashing into, yep, Sarah Milington, natch, bringing us both to the ground.

Soon after that, I started smoking fags and reading books by Sylvia Plath. I listened to The Smiths a lot and bleached my hair. I decided that an artform that was dependent on grace was probably not the best choice for me and that I would be a writer, because then it didn’t matter what you looked like.

These days I do most of my dancing at home, alone, in my green high heels. I've had my eyes lasered so I'm not worried about stumbling.

My sister met Sarah Millington last Christmas at Midnight Mass. She married an accountant, apparently.