I could visualise it. I was going to be the most graceful, amazing, sensual belly dancer in all the land. I would wow the class with my natural gift for movement. Men would be drawn to me and I would hypnotise them with my shimmying. I could barely wait to begin!

Sadly (and unsurprisingly) this was not to be. Instead, I had the grace of an arthritic goat on roller skates (or Arthritic Roller-Goat if you prefer – and I do). It truly was something to behold and suddenly all of my childhood memories of ridicule and torment came flooding back.

Now, there were three groups of girls in my PE dance classes. The pretty and somewhat evil group of ‘popular girls’ or ‘Bitches’ if you will. These seemed to be born with the ability to remember entire dance routines after seeing them performed only once. They were probably doing jazz-hands in the womb.

The next group, I like to call ‘everyone else’. These were neither great nor terrible, they were happy to get on with it and have a go.

Then there was me and my friends who were equally ungifted and so amazingly uncoordinated that it is a wonder we weren’t put in a lab somewhere and studied in the hope that one day a cure might be found. We tended to stick together at the back of the room a safe distance away from ridicule.

I truly thought those days were behind me and, to a point I really had forgotten about them. But now, once again, I was the infamous PE Div-Kid at the back of the class at least three steps behind in any given dance routine and being the only person in a roomful of 30 women to turn right when everyone else was turning left. This was all well and good and bloody funny too until one of the routines called for the use of bamboo canes and I almost took the eye out of the person next to me.

After attending for a few weeks I started to notice a very small improvement and found I could manage to shimmy for almost 10 seconds before my un-co-ordination gene would kick in and I would be returned to a state of ‘Arthritic-Roller-Goat’.

I was so proud of myself. Surely now I would be the sensual goddess I had once believed I could be. I rejoiced and burst in to the most fantastic shimmy you could ever imagine. It was around this point that the knot on my coin belt came loose and after a particularly violent hip thrust it was launched across the room and landed at the feet of the woman next to me. Now I had another dilemma; Retrieve the belt but risk getting knocked unconscious by the substantial hips of the woman shimmying away with alarming vigour, or, continue shimmying without my belt and not make that satisfying jingling sound while I was doing so. It really was no contest.

I was going in.

I thought at first that a well-aimed foot-probe would be my best bet. I slowly leaned my body back and my foot moved forward but she seemed to anticipate my plan and spun round in a crafty shimmy-walk-combo and I was forced to retreat. I then decided to just duck and swoop in to grab it and I managed to pick up the belt and escape unharmed, narrowly missing her rapidly approaching hip and a black eye.

By the time I managed to re-tie my belt the class was over and I was left feeling cheated and unsatisfied so I went home and shimmied there instead which really confused my cats. They seemed to think they were under some kind of attack from an army of cats, their eyes searching desperately to detect the origin of this erratic jingling. They remained baffled for a number of days. Visit 4 was no less entertaining. I had reached a stage by this point that it was no longer acceptable to be completely crap. I was still managing to stay near the back of the room, which in my opinion was better for all concerned and a point of health and safety.

The teacher started the class and I obediently followed instruction a-la Arthritic-Roller-Goat (who by now seemed to be responding well to the arthritis medication and could almost manage to look as though it were not in pain). I shimmied as though my life depended on it, the sound was deafening and it was marvellous. The class continued and I grew more and more confident. I was undulating, figure-of-eighting, camelling, doing the fancy snake arms… I was a Belly Dancer!

Every now and again, throughout this frenzied orgy of hip-shaking madness I could hear the faint sound of the door opening and closing but was having way too much fun to stop and peek at who or what might be opening the door.

At this point I should probably mention that the class is held in a local village hall adjacent to the Bowls green.

As the music eventually ended and we came to a stop I turned round to get my water bottle and take a sip before the cool down. There are no words to describe the sight before me. Four bowls players who must have been 105 years old if they were a day! Four wrinkly bowls players looking somewhat bewildered having come inside to use the toilet only to be transfixed by the vision of loud shininess that stood before them.

When I mentioned hypnotising men, trust me, this really wasn’t what I had in mind.

(No wrinkly pensioners were harmed during the telling of this story).