How to... Visit a stately home

First things first - ensure the property is open before you visit. When I was a kid, nine of us drove 50 miles across Lincolnshire in two cars, only to find Belton House was closed on Mondays. It didn’t dilute my enthusiasm - to me, visiting a stately home is THE best way to spend a Sunday.

If your chosen property belongs to the National Trust or English Heritage, you’d better have a very convincing answer ready for why you don't want to become a member. The little old ladies in the gift shop may look sweet, but they are all ex-KGB and will sniff out any hint of weakness. Before you know it you’re signing Direct Debit paperwork and being given a free travel rug with water-resistant backing. Prepare your response before you go in. I answer with a blunt “No, I really don’t,” with a disarming smile, but you may wish to be less direct.

Guided tours are the work of the Devil. For every interesting tour guide there are five retired teachers who miss doing Assembly and will bore you rigid with tales of which portrait married which, when all you really want to do is admire some marquetry or gaze in rapture at an exquisite piece of cornicing. It’s even worse if the group is small - once there was just the two of us, meaning we spent the entire hour nodding and making encouraging interjections of Hmm, Fascinating and Really?

Room guides are better, but with an average age of 92, sometimes they sit so quietly that you start to worry they have died. (They tend to revive quickly when another volunteer approaches with a cup of tea and a pink wafer biscuit.)

Houses still in private ownership always have lots of contemporary photographs on display. Owing to centuries of inbreeding aristocrats are rarely photogenic and often startlingly ugly, but it is bad form to leap backwards with a cry of “What is THAT?”, especially if “that” turns out to be the 33rd Baroness Pendlebury.

Uncoordinated

Much to my husband's horror, I am resolutely devoted to Strictly Come Dancing. Well, I say devoted - I don't watch the weekday catch ups, or in fact the Sunday results show, but for two hours on a Saturday evening he knows I am not to be interrupted unless there is blood (or a Chinese takeaway).

I would love to be a good singer. I would love to be a good dancer. Sadly, I am neither. I am a fairly gangly person and my limbs take on the jerky and unpredictable quality of an octopus being attacked by an electric eel. One is rarely called upon to sing in public, but dancing is harder to avoid. "Dad dancing" is endearing in a middle aged man, tragic in a 36 year old woman.

Speaking of middle aged men, Dave Myers - one of the Hairy Bikers - is this year's comedy turn on Strictly. To my embarrassment, the closest thing I've ever seen to my own attempts at dancing was his "Moves like Jagger" tour de force in week 1. (Past a certain level of inebriation I stop caring I am crap, and Go For It in a manner that has ruined several weddings.)

Next weekend two friends are having a joint birthday party. Watch out Village Hall, me and my pelvic thrusts are coming to get you!