THE Daughter is a funky little mover. From a toddler in a tutu, she has matured to the cutting edge of pop’s contemporary movement and, if I had to live vicariously, this is the route we’d be taking. So this month I am dancing strictly every week.

Dancing is good for the soul, and I love it. I’ve always been one of the keenies lurking at the edge of the dancefloor whenever there’s a party in the village, waiting for some other fruit loops to come and shake their booty with me, but until a few years back I hadn’t danced with a partner in a Strictly Come Dancing way for a long time. Or ever if I’m honest, though as a teenager my friend Caroline and I did giggle our way through the foxtrot and quickstep to avoid blizzards on the school netball pitch. I’ve always thought, however, that there’s a sultry Argentinian tango inside me just waiting to be unleashed. One day I hope to be able to dazzle somebody, somewhere, in red sequins.

As an interim step, in 2008 I took up Ceroc, easy modern jive with a smidgeon of salsa, and once a week, babysitter and funds allowing, spend an evening in shoes that would be inappropriately sparkly for any other occasion.

It’s great to powder up, add pearls and a fox fur and prance into the evening like something from a black-and-white movie. Actually, I don’t have any pearls, and I think the 1940s would raise their eyebrows at some of the skimpier dance frocks whirling in Oxford Town Hall on a Wednesday, but the principle’s the same.

And going dancing is just like entering Narnia: you step through the wardrobe into another world populated by a wonderful mix of people you would never meet otherwise, young and old, English Rose and sultry Mediterranean Joe, a 6ft Pole alongside a jolly Beryl Cook-a-like. There’s no need to plan ahead, no need to phone a friend, and though The Partner-in-Crime sometimes comes, I usually go on my own.

Once there, the men take the lead (theoretically) but remember the old line, that while Fred Astaire was renowned for his Broadway moves, everything he did, Ginger Rogers did backwards and in high heels. And so, motherhood is great preparation for dancing because the principle is the same – you have no idea what’s going to happen next and you just concentrate on avoiding the trampling Troll feet with good grace. In return, dancing gives us the perfect philosophy for parenting: life isn’t how to survive the storm, it’s learning to dance in the rain.

Would you care to dance?