Seven going on seventeen

The boys have gone to the North West 200 motorbike road races for the weekend, yuck, so as it was just the two of us, I promised the Dolly I would take her out for tea last night.

So, as soon as she got home from school, she set about busying herself for our big night out. Several outfits were tried on and rejected, shoes were scattered from one end of her room to the other and of course she had to accessorize. Make-up was requested, but I drew the line at mascara on this occasion.

We had to go to a restaurant in town, she said, so we decided on Villa Italia, well worth a visit if you are ever in the vicinity with your own 7 year old. So we headed into town, in the Mini, with the roof down of course, and we're sitting at a set of traffic lights (I do occasionally stop at them mother) when she asks what we will be doing after we have had dinner?

Well, I said, we will probably go home again. She looks at me aghast and I can tell there's no way she's having that. What would you like to do I ask. Well, of course, she would like to go into town, like into town to do some shopping. (This idea was probably precipitated by the arrival of her bank statement yesterday which informed her she had £53.82 in her account)

Well, the shops would all be closed by the time we were finished I reasoned. She did think about that momentarily before then saying that she wanted to go into town anyway, in fact she wanted to go where all those pretty big girls in the lovely sparkly dresses were going. So my seven year old wants to go clubbing.

At the restaurant we asked for a table for one and a half and were duly given a nice table in the corner, where Dolly chose the seat facing out into the restaurant and spent the rest of the night sucking up single strands of spaghetti and waving at other customers.

A bowl of spaghetti bolognaise and half a chocolate nut sundae (without the nuts) later she looks at me with her big doe eyes and says she wants to go to bed.

And so a night in Belfast's clubs avoided for another day!