Smidge

After trying in vain and failing to zip up yet another dress ordered online the time has finally come to admit that I have gone up a dress size.

I’ve been tiny for a very long time. The effects of alcohol and bad eating have been mitigated by a dodgy digestive system that whilst very unhealthy had the bonus of keeping me slim and trim with very little effort on my part.

But the bi-monthly weigh in by my specialist gastroenterologist has shown a steady upward trend. 2 pounds 1 month, 4 the next. Health wise it’s great. I am off the ‘we are very worried about her’ list and about to start the last round of tests. I haven’t had a sick day in 4 months. I have more energy and more positivity, life is becoming good again.

But I can’t deny it’s anymore, it’s not a few extra pounds anymore, but a whole extra stone. But I am not fat, I have a comfortable 23 BMI, on the topside of healthy. But I no longer look like me.

For a start I have page 3 boobs.

Now I am not complaining, but I seem to be the only person who puts on weight and it goes on their boobs. I haven’t gone up a dress size because of the tummy but the tits. Squeezing these babies into a dress that fits my hips just aint gonna happen. I may still only be a 32 around the top, but I am now buying a size E. An E?? I used to be a B before I started growing. At my age I should not be having this kind of growth spurt.

I get tooted at, winked at, heads turn. I have become an object to be stared at. The boy of course, loves em. He would. He is allowed.

It’s flattering, but a little disconcerting. How do you girls cope with this? I am so used to looking like a boy; I honestly have no idea how to react to it….or even find clothes that fit a figure like this that don’t make me look like i should be on page 3!

As it’s only 3 more sleeps until I am officially on holiday I thought I better get my ass in gear and sort this place out for whilst I am away.

I’d like to leave it in safe hands you see.

So I am looking for a guest blogger (or two, or three) to pretty up my place with a  little of their own style. Topic is free for you to choose… feel free to write about relationships, sex, shoes, travelling or weird ocd habits, basically all of my favourite topics.

Drop me a line if you wish to participate. I flee the country on Sunday so i’ll need posts by then..

thanks xx

P.s I’ll be thinking of you all whilst I sit here sunning myself with a glass of wine…

We live in a smaller world today than 50 years ago, or even 10 years ago for that matter. Smaller, because every time I meet someone I can always find a connection, someone else we know. I can meet someone at a pop up Edinburgh festival bar and find that they used to live in my home town and went out with the boy I had planned to marry if I found myself alone at 40 – as well as having gone to school with The Boy.

 I’m used to the 6 degrees of separation this city has, I grew up in a small village, I grew up with the internet, with aeroplanes; i’m not used to snail mail, and travel that takes weeks not days. I’m used to instant communication, with sky-ping my sister in Australia after she has spent 12 hours on night shift. I watch her eat toast as she watches me smoke and drink a glass of wine before bed.

I like the fact that the boy who I met only 2.5 years ago knows my friends of 13 years – that birthdays and parties and leaving do’s are often joint affairs. It re-affirms us as a couple, that our world is small around us. I like text messages and phone calls. I like being close to people through their blogs. I like small things, I would I am small myself.

But sometimes your world can suddenly grow. The sister moved to Australia, had a child and a demanding granny and now my life is spent working out time differences and planning 24 hour flights. When you can’t travel electronically your world suddenly becomes much larger than you planned.

My best friend has just taken a job 250 miles away. 250 miles – that’s just a day’s diving from some people, but in this small country of ours, 250 miles is forever. Its 8.5 hours by train, 7 hours by coach, 6 hours drive or a scary flight north on a propeller plane. Its less than that to my parents and I often feel the distance between us.

I congratulated her on her job of course, but that I would miss her. I can no longer jump on the train and be with her 30 minutes later, a hangover on the way home will be much worse if I have to deal with it for 8 hours. I will miss her like crazy, electronic communication alone between us is not enough.

…but these are small worries; in reality my world has suddenly got larger, I had forgotten how large it could get.

I was on holiday last week, which is why I wasn’t around for a week.

(What you didn’t miss me?)

Part of my week off was spent at the parental’s house in the country. Yep I am a country bumpkin, from, as best mate described it – Pride and Prejudice land. Its pretty, it’s rural, it’s in the bloody middle of nowhere. So there isn’t much else to do apart from drink. Or make a fool of yourself. These are not mutually exclusive in my parent’s house.

I do not have normal parents.

In fact growing up, I was the girl with the ‘cool’ parents, the ones that buggered off to places like China and India and a tour of South America and erm Graceland during our summer holidays leaving the sister and me in the care of various relatives and school friends. In fact the Mother is currently hightailing it around Fuji! We did get to have a beach hut at Scarborough every year so it wasn’t all bad.  

They bought me booze and let me go to festivals and camping and having parties whilst they were on holiday (well until the sister had to do a yellow pages number on a mahogany table and someone threw up in my parents bed). They also spent (and still do spend) a lot of time on ‘the stage’, with my father in particular having a strange ongoing fascination with dressing as a woman…and an old woman at that (thats him on the left!).

It was an idyllic childhood.

Anyways, the parentals like a drink. I like a drink, the boy likes a drink, and there isn’t much to do at my parents apart from drink. So we drank…and when people drink inappropriate things are said.

Embarrassingly inappropriate things.

(For new readers a bit of background. I got married in 2000, separated ooh about 8 months later after he cheated on me and like a pair of hippies only managed to get divorced a few months ago, just short of our 10^th wedding anniversary. This was all pre-internet age so the wedding pics cant be found online but there is one here you can laugh at)

Last weekend, my mother in her wisdom decided that the best time to inform me that she had found my wedding video whilst having a clear out. At the time we were  sitting with a load of my school friends parents (and the boy) in the local pub. She didn’t just let me know quietly in my ear; no she yelled it across the table at me, hooting with laughter.

Sadly, no one else apart from her found it funny.

What may have become a funny joke in my mother’s eyes, something in the past, now forgotten about apart from to take the piss out of – is still a taboo subject, a shameful occurrence in my parents circle; no one wants a divorced child.

So, yes, the entire table turned towards me with sorrowful, embarrassed eyes; the fact I was sitting there with a gorgeous boy giggling away next to me was forgotten. I was dragged backwards to being the daughter whose marriage had failed. White trash, tainted, lucky to have found someone else who would accept me.

All those things have been said to me.

And it seems that I am to be never allowed to forget it. It was 10 years ago for god’s sake. Get over it.

I have.

The video is still at home. Intact. It’s in the loft, shoved into the box containing my wedding dress. Whilst I have moved on, i’m keeping both the dress and video as evidence of why I should never do anything anyone expects of me, never accept anyone else’s opinion on what I choose to do, especially if that means doing something that people may not approve of due to their own prejudices.

The one thing I have learnt from my parents –  whilst they might embarrass me all the time – is the ability to accept and move on from the past; and have a bloody good laugh at it too.

It’s a shame most of the world can’t as well.

Do your parents/parent’s friends see divorce as the ultimate taboo?

Life is a bitch and then you pick yourself up and carry on…right? Right. No point in living otherwise. Life is far too short to wallow in the mire of feeling like shit.

(Slight back step here – If you need the password for the last 2 posts to find out what I am referring to here, then just ask, more personal posts usually have a p/w to protect the feelings of people who I know IRL reading this)

Anyways, it turns out that the best cure is to talk about it, say sorry, hug it out* and then go and get royally pissed. If not problem solved then problem masked for a while.

It also turns out that commitment takes work, actually, commitment takes commitment. Who knew being in something long term, wanting to spend the rest of your life with someone could be so hard?

(This, of course isn’t the first time I (we?) have come up against something like this. Almost this time last year I wrote this post, which is where my Tinkerbelle nickname came from)

I’m addicted to the magic of being in love. I always have, although I have often confused love with lust. Actually make that always confused love with lust. In fact, every relationship I have been in has been lust disguising itself as love. I couldn’t describe any of them as being real love – I see that now.

I once thought that once the spell between two people has been broken, it couldn’t be just magic’d back. But that’s lust, love is different. Love is not a spell, love is not magic, it is real and true and once love is there it’s bloody hard to break. Love does not fade; love does not change over time. My love for those I love will be enduring for ever. Anything else is not real love, but a poor shadow of what it could be.

But love is not clear cut, or nice, or perfect. Love is fading magic punctured by moments of pure pleasure.

We were people watching over dinner last night, watching the couples eating dinner together, all generations of couples – the new ones, the 2.5 year ones (like us!), the 30 years and the 50 year ones. What struck me about all of the couples was their ability to just ‘be’ with the other person. Whatever problems they may be having, they were there together.

It reminded me that whilst the fake spell of lust can not be maintained – and should not be maintained – trust, attraction, companionship and giggles, can.

I of course remain eternally hopeful that I am right about this.

Home is always where the heart is and mine is in the countryside. 

My childhood home. 

Market gardening – fresh courgettes

The pumpkin competition is getting fierce…

Caught unawares concentrating hard to get it to light

Sausages and ribs 

Village Life

geek for glasses!