I have been having a panic.
It has suddenly dawned on me that I am attending several smartly-dressed events in the next few weeks, and perhaps I ought to contemplate an inspection of my wardrobe.
I have got to attend a Cambridge Awards Night, following which I have got to be in Gordonstoun the very next night for a summer ball and teenage graduation, a week after which I am going on a whole-family expedition with Number One Daughter to cheer her on for her date with the King.
It does not take somebody with massive powers of perception to spot that these events are all decidedly middle-class in their nature, and that my usual daily garb of dungarees and flip-flops will not be appropriate, not even if I choose the ones without paint on. Not even if I iron them first.
I have been contemplating this with some concern.
This afternoon I thought that perhaps some considerable expense and difficulty could be avoided if I decided to rent some clothes, and retreated to the mighty Internet to examine what it had on offer.
It wanted to know what size I was, and of course I had no idea. The dungarees I wear are a size 16, which is horribly rounded but worth it because it is the consequence of many greatly appreciated bags of chocolate buttons. I frowned, and thought for a little while, and then measured myself and fed in the results.
The mighty Internet assured me that I was a size 22.
I gulped in horror because I was quite certain that even my enthusiasm for chocolate buttons has not been quite so pronounced, and began to think that perhaps I had better make some serious attempts to become thinner. Indeed, my panic was such that I rushed upstairs to the loft in a masochistic determination to try on my existing Size 16 dresses to see if they no longer fitted me.
Rather to my surprise, they all fitted perfectly well. One of them would not zip up, which was depressing, until I took it off and discovered that it still would not zip up even though my rolls of pasty flab were no longer inside it .
They are all a bit on the tight side, but certainly not three dress sizes too tight, nothing that could not be remedied perfectly well by a nasty dose of Bat Flu in the next few weeks, if anybody has any that they would like to share, give me a shout.
It occurred to me afterwards that a more accurate set of measurements might be reached if first I removed my shirt, T-shirt, vest, dungarees and woolly jumper, but I was dressed again by then, and it was just too difficult.
All the same, I think I had better make some effort to become less portly before the events, not least because then I can eat several enormous and satisfactory dinners without the difficulty of my clothes becoming instantly uncomfortable. I am not looking forward to this. That supermodel who declared that Nothing Tastes As Good As Skinny Feels has clearly never had chocolate buttons.
Armed with the determination to become thinner, which will not last once it is dinner time, I went back to the mighty Internet, and frankly, was not impressed. I can safely say there was not a single dress that I liked the look of. Some of them had weirdly uneven hems, longer at the back than the front, as if the manufacturer had run out of fabric halfway through. Some were designed like dressing gowns, the sort of thing that you have to wrap around yourself, which is a type of garment I would consider fraught with peril, especially after a few drinks. Some were even missing one shoulder. I can’t imagine how infuriating a garment like that would become, you would have to drink a great deal in order not to keep trying to hitch it up to cover the draughty space. Almost all of them were made of some horrible polyester, nothing was sensible cotton or linen, and they were the most peculiar shapes.
I sighed and gave up. I am afraid I might have to consider making my own. At least it would be original and not look as though it was straight off the peg at John Lewis, or wherever one goes to purchase these pieces of sartorial frippery. Most certainly it would not look like that.
I wonder if the King minds dungarees.
