We are pushing out the boundaries of our middle age lives, we are holding back the walls, we are - if only for a few minutes- reversing the process. It's a fact that we leave the water enlarged and as (temporarily ) invincible as any unlined or untested young Adonis or Athena.

But just what is it, I wondered that we're trying not to give up? There's the obvious of course. We're trying not to give up moving, dancing, having fun, touching our toes, wearing cute dance gear, going out after six pm ... But it's deeper than that as well. Last night was a shock because I realised that a rather large part of my identity just isn't there any more. Once was a dancer? How can I say that, when I can barely put one foot in front of another?

My short story, the tea set, takes its inspiration from a real life tea set my maternal grandmother won at The Hoppings fairground, Newcastle Town Moor, shortly before WW2. I don’t know exactly how the set was won, but I do know it was carried home in a crate of straw and that the neighbours came out to look. I know because my mother, the real story teller in our family, told me.

At sixteen I left home to attend a theatre school and train as a dancer. Within a year the course I was on had folded and we dancers were shifted onto the adjacent year’s Musical theatre course, where the entry age had been eighteen. In effect, this meant that my fellow students were now at least two years older than me. As a teenager, that’s a big age gap.