It's Official: She Can Dance, If She Wants To

At the start of the month, amidst a flurry of last-minute private tuition to make up for mandatory workshops missed due to absence in foreign climes, Eloise danced her Royal Academy of Dance Ballet Grade Three examination.

She seemed to think that she and her little coven of dancers had done all right; the hair alone - a four-plaited lepidopterus of some considerable complexity - should have won an award. As each grade has come and gone the exams have become a little easier.

The certificate with the marks came through the other day, and even though it's Eloise's little project and I, in the nicest possible way, don't have any emotional investment in it, is was with some trepidation that I looked at the result as she stood there before me looking inscrutably nervous.

But not-so-little Eloise has outdone herself again and scraped in with a Distinction, which must be outstanding, because no less a luminary that Darcey Bussell (CBE) herself has had her signiture photocopied onto the certificate as a token of the high regard in which she holds Eloise personally.