I Couldn't Give A Ballerina

My Dear Fellow,

Night one of my burning the candle at both ends was a resounding success. I can claim no credit for this. All organisation was undertaken by Princess Normal, who booked us 1st class seats at the Dominion for “Logan”.

As usual, her chat was top stuff. She was telling me of a new Mum technique she has come up with.

One of the girls asked the Princess for something because all her friends had it. The Princess raised her arms over her head and placed her fingers together to form a zero. “This is the number of effs I give about your friends,” she explained to her bemused daughter. “Whenever I do this in future, you will know that’s how many effs I give and I won’t have to say anything.”

“You look like a ballerina,” replied the daughter. Princess Normal responded by singing “The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy”.

“That’s all I have to do now, if they are trying it on,” she told me. “It’s great because instead of being p1ssed off with me they are too busy laughing. Eventually it will stop being funny. To them anyway – not to me.”

She’s right, by the way. I got Sugar Plum Fairied when I started talking about work but was too busy laughing to be annoyed that my brilliant chat had been interrupted. Instead we talked about the Princess’ upcoming half-marathon in May so there was a lot of talk about appropriate attire and profuse sweating.

"I'm not sure I need to hear all this moisture talk,” I observed.

“Oooh, you with your aversion to bodily fluids,” she replied. “In that case, I’m going to go for a BIG WAZ.”

Our humour is very intellectual.

I wasn’t that sure about the film. It was good, but very sad, which is not what I was expecting. But having nice people bring you a bottle of wine before the film starts is BRILLIANT. And the Princess was clearly enjoying the experience too, singing along to the 20th Century Fox fanfare and keeping my glass filled.

Afterward she took me to a brilliant little pub which I have now tragically forgotten the name of, and instructed me on the fine art of embarrassing your children:

While out running again, the Princess saw one of her girls on the other side of the street. “Obviously I waved,” she continued, “and Kirsten’s friends waved back, but Kirsten sort of did that turning away thing. So I did the Dab. Then I did it again to make sure her mates had seen me.”

(The Dab, according to the internet, is a hip-hop dance move designed to embarrass you when your mum does it in public).

It turns out that Princess Normal was trained young. She explained how she’d asked her own father not to embarrass her as they approached a group of her friends so he took her by the hand and went skipping up to them. “He actually skipped,” she recalled. “Part of me was dying with embarrassment but another part of me thought it was f***ing funny.”

I’m only telling you the funny bits of course, it might give you a bit of a skewed picture of the Princess. She also told me about “Hidden Figures” and of a childhood holiday to South Africa during apartheid. Time flew, and we continued on putting the world to rights until midnight. It was one of those nights when you wish pubs didn’t close, drinks never ended and Sugar Plum Fairies Dabbed until dawn.

El P.