When I was little I wanted to be an actress. “You don’t want to do that,” my mother said. “It’s just a lot of waiting around.” Yesterday I saw just how much waiting around is involved.

I took the girls to audition for the musical Annie in Dubai. We got there at 10am sharp as we’d been told to do and joined a queue. Two hours later we were still in said queue. Then we were finally allocated numbers and told we had another two hours to wait. Maybe that’s why the most famous song in the show is called ‘Tomorrow’.

“We quit,” said the girls, ripping off their sticky numbers. I am normally quite a determined type, but four hours of waiting to be told they haven’t got the lead part seemed a little excessive, even for an ambitious mother like me.
So we headed to a party on the beach. Much more fun. We danced and ate and drank and ran up and down the beach carrying pink balloons. The girls looked lovely in their Monsoon sale kit. One advantage of the credit crunch is that 70 per cent off is the new black.

As I gazed at the moon while listening to 80s pop music and sipping champagne, I reflected that Noel Coward was right. “Don’t put your daughter on the stage, Mrs Worthington,” he said. Sound advice. Which my mother followed and I am beginning to see the wisdom of.

Of course this does not apply to ballet. On Wednesday the girls will be performing their “Arabic dance” at a theatre in Abu Dhabi. I am hoping the only queuing will be from the eager public…..

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2009