Piano lessons expose all my flaws - in black and white But here's the real rub: my husband is absolutely brilliant at it. After three lessons, he's rampaging across the ivories like Fats Waller on Ritalin. Every evening he rushes in from work and, without even taking off his coat, sits down to practise. He doesn't get disheartened by the tricky bits: he just pummels them into submission. This, I now realise (two decades too late), is why he won all the prizes at school, while I failed almost every exam I ever took. He is the living embodiment of Thomas Edison's recipe for genius: 1 per cent inspiration, 99 per cent perspiration. I, on the other hand, am 100 per cent defeatism. To celebrate his fifth birthday this week, I took my son George to see the ballet of The Snowman. Personally, I have never really got on with ballet. I find the muteness of it unnerving. There must be - there are! - easier ways to tell a story than by scampering hither and thither on your tippy-toes, gesturing at the horizon or clutching at your heart. Anyway, the rest of the audience seemed to love The Snowman. But such is the narcissism of parenthood that I was secretly thrilled when, five minutes in, George turned to me with a look of utter disgust. "Why do they keep dancing?" he demanded loudly. Can we go home and watch Cars 2 instead? A philistine who gives up at the first hurdle: that's my boy. I married an unreconstructed man from a large family, which means that every year I have to buy at least 40 Christmas presents. Gift-giving on this scale requires military planning. This year, I started in September, was feeling dangerously smug by November, and planned to devote all December to the wrapping/distribution phase. But it's always the same with Christmas shopping: you get down to the last 10 names on the list, and the whole operation grinds to a halt. It doesn't matter how hard you shop - the list won't budge. You head for the biggest mall you can find, under the delusion that shopping is easier in dangerously overcrowded conditions. You panic buy hand cream, fancy chocolates and novelty hot water bottles. Soon you're dragging around so many bags that you have to shuffle through them like snow. But there's still nothing in them that anyone would want. This is Christmas as warfare. And I'm about ready to surrender.