Retail therapy: don't knock it

OH. MY. GOD. I have a waist! It’s brilliant. I’ve not had a waist for years and now it’s there. I can’t tell you the joy. I can actually go shopping for clothes again. You know clothes that are pretty and dare I even say it frivolous!

For years I have dreaded shopping for clothes and avoided it at all costs because invariably I would come home in tears. Every time I’d go in a shop I would see beautiful things and then try them on only for huge disappointment; those beautiful things did not look beautiful on me. It got to the stage that I just didn’t bother with things like skirts or dresses. I avoided all clothes that were short in the body as these would never cover my fat tummy and I avoided low slung jeans. Not for me the straight leg or slim fit.  Not for me a crop top or even a jumper that was not deliberately baggy. I craftily covered up my shortcomings with gillets, big jumpers and long shirts.

I dreaded the warm weather when people started to uncover. My legs certainly never got to see the light of day and as for me wearing a T-shirt please with my body! I used to say I didn’t feel the heat and would have the air con in the car at full blast so none of the Mummies at school would have a clue.

I blended into the background all 11st and 5ft 3 inches of me ashamed, saddened and ever so slightly envious of all those leggy things.  Those Size 12s and Size 10s who all looked so happy and pretty and ever so stylish.

I started to notice  my turkey neck and all those grey hairs as I became more and more critical of my looks or lack of them. And I felt old so very very old. Probably whay I decided to try ThinkingSlimmer. It has worked on my weight but although I could see it coming off I couldn’t see any changes so to speak…

So on Friday I got dressed in crumpled clothes and hid it all under a coat for my trip down to London for a lunch with work colleagues, a rare treat for me. I arrived an hour early so decided to have a look round the shops, a glutton for punishment.

I trip trapped my way to Hobbs on Regent Street, as in the distant past before children and before living in the countryside had taken its toll, Hobbs had served me well.

My heart sank a bit on entering but just as I was about to make a hasty retreat I looked at myself in the mirror and realised with a sudden horror how awful I looked. There was no way I could possibly go out to lunch looking like that!

A dilemma.

Humiliate myself in front of yet another load of unspeakably glamorous shop assistants or humiliate myself in front of my work colleagues.

I chose the former reckoning that if I did humiliate myself at least I would never ever have to confront the shop assistants ever again because the likelihood of me even setting foot again in Hobbs let alone the Regent Street store would be exceedingly slim if not impossible.

I was approached by a softly spoken lady asking if she could help me and she said it so sincerely and was so gentle that I blurted out my fears and begged her to help me. An outfit for lunch; for today.

But no short skirts above the knee…

I glanced dubiously at the serried rows of impossibly chic clothing. Rack upon rack of it and nothing looked comfortable and none of it looked remotely as if it would suit me.

I tried to enter in to the spirit of things and was offered clothes that were silent in soft grey and navy blue. No shouting these. Understated one might call them safe may be another word. And then my eye was caught by a little animal print top and a heavenly green skirt. I was expecting disaster but when I was taken into the changing room something amazing happened. I had a waist. It was really there and I didn’t look half as bad as I feared. I tried on a few more tops, things that clung to me accentuating my long forgotten form.

I ummed and awed.

Then I was shown a dress, a wrap-around animal print dress. Surely a step too far!

It felt like a bit of heaven. I stepped out of the changing room and had a look at myself in the large mirror on the shop floor. I put my hands on my hips and turned this way and that and out of the corner of my eye I spotted a fabulous bright green scarf. Grabbing it I draped it over my shoulders and took another look in the mirror. The image looked back at me and smiled and well it was perfect. I looked good. Really good.

I left the store feeling a million dollars, a lightness in my step that I had not felt in years. And do you know what: Retail therapy: don’t knock it….

Help! I've forgotten how to be female

Somewhere along the way I have stopped being a girl. I am many things Mum, cook, cleaner, laundress, chief weeder, chaperone, taxi driver, chicken keeper, bottle washer, dog (and cat) pooper picker upper extraordinaire, but sadly not female.
I actually didn’t notice the loss of my sexuality, it didn’t hurt at all. And it wasn’t until recently that I noticed it had gone in the first place. And now I am rather discombobulated as I don’t know what I am anymore.
Maybe it’s because all the rest of them are boys and I have to sort of blend in so I don’t stick out like a sore thumb. It’s a camouflage thing. I hate being different. It’s also not necessarily practical being a girly. I mean I can hardly see myself feeding the chickens in my Louboutins or wearing a beautiful Roksanda Ilincic dress when I wring their necks and eviscerate them.
It’s unlikely I’ll be putting my beautifully manicured hands through the trauma of pulling bind weed or getting all dolled up for a game of tag rugby in the back garden.
But I still wonder where it all went.
In London I used to dress up every day and thought nothing of it. I had beautiful clothes which I loved to wear, high heels even, and I always wore makeup. Not much mind as I never could deal with foundation but mascara, eyeliner, a bit of lip gloss. A bit of Bronzer, a dusting of “instant health”. My hands were always clean, nails always short and neat with a bit of clear nail polish. My toenails on the other hand were always painted in an array of colours to match my outfits even if no one but me ever saw them.
I enjoyed shopping for clothes and updating my wardrobe. I loved trying things on and the heady indulgence of buying things on a whim or for an occasion and then of course there were the shoes! Oh the shoes! Russell & Bromley, Charles Jourdan, Gina, Emma Hope, it was heaven!
I dressed brightly drawn to strong colours and I revelled in the fact that with my coloring I could carry them off as well. The smart savvy little red wool business suit from Hobbs worn with a black roll top. My legs incased in long black leather jack boots. Topped off with a vibrant stripped velvet trilby hat and scarf. The amazing 1950’s style bright pink ¾ sleeve jacket and skin tight hobble skirt from LK Bennett worn with a rakish navy and white staw hat, huge sunglasses and my Gran’s white kid gloves and delectable navy kitten heels for a friend’s wedding.
Nowadays I worry about where I will get new jeans as mine are splitting at the seams and unsightly white flesh is seeping through. I bulk buy them from Sam Turners in Yorkshire as they are the only outlet I know that sell Wranglers. If I am feeling a little crazy I buy a darker shade of indigo for smart. Oh how the mighty are fallen!
I notice I now have flesh rather than a body and it doesn’t do what I thought it should still do. Now it sags. The definition between my hips, waist and boobs is somewhat hazy and I note the size differential and lopsidedness of my right hand boob is more pronounced than I remember.
My clothes are mostly made up of jumpers and sweatshirts in the winter and strangely foreshortened T-shirts in an array of colours which I inevitably have to have a shirt to cover because well I look odd. And all this is worn with the ubiquitous jeans. Boot cut in an effort to try to stay in style and to draw away the eye from the fact that my legs are rather short and stumpy and yes that huge round blob at the top is my bum. I try to stick to the rules a la Trinny and Susannah and I try to love myself as Gok says I should but it’s hopeless. I have forgotten how to be female!