Ski-jump boobs

Had a fab day shopping yesterday with two good friends, L and M.  There's nothing quite like wandering round shops and sitting gossiping over coffee.

L loves nice lingerie.  Everything she buys is gorgeous, from proper well-known bra manufacturers like Playtex, and usually in matching sets - unlike mine which tend to be whatever greyish bobbly bra comes to hand, along with a generic black thong.  But I need new bras, so while M stood and watched tolerantly, L and I rushed round the lingerie department comparing sale prices and waving brightly coloured scraps at each other saying "Do you like this one?  What about this one?"

 I used to be a 36B.  At least, I thought I did, until I went into a proper lingerie shop aged around 26, and found I was actually a 34D.  Then I got pregnant, and my sizes went haywire while I breastfed, and finally settled into a 34DD.  Thirteen years later, I've been wearing a 34DD all the time, even though my weight has yo-yo'd from 10st to 12st5lb.  I recently dropped just over a stone, and my bras just don't seem to fit right, so I decided to treat myself.  I went out last week and tried a few bras on, and figured I was probably a 32E, but couldn't find any decent ones.

But here, in this lovely lingerie department, with a nice helpful lady assistant, I went to town and tried on loads of bras.  None of them fitted 'right'.  One in particular looked exceptionally odd - the tips of my boobs pointed upwards, exactly like the end of a ski jump!  I stuck my head out of the cubicle and called M over, and both her and the assistant stared at my boobs.  I looked like Madonna in her cone corset.  But then... I found the right bra.  I really liked this one design, but the closest they had to my size was a 32F.  I figured I'd try it anyway... and it fitted.  Like, really REALLY fitted.  I called the assistant, and she had a tug and a pull and a poke and declared it perfect.

So I am now officially a 32F.  Bloody hell, I'm never going to be able to buy cheap bras again, am I?  Perhaps I can persuade S that buying expensive lingerie for me is a Good Thing...

Skinned knees and washing-line swings

I was born as the hippie culture was at its height, and grew up in the glorious 1970s, a time of polyester clothes and the Purdey hairstyle, Star Wars and ABBA, Chopper bikes and cars without seatbelts.  The world had never heard of HIV, computers were in their infancy, and TV had three channels.

We children of the 70's had two options for entertainment - stay home and read a book or play a record (or if you were lucky, an 8-track cassette), or go out on the street and play with our friends.  I would get home from school, have a cup of tea, then straight out to play.  I lived on a nice council estate in East London, and there were always 8 or 10 kids knocking around the streets playing games like run-outs or it or Bulldog.

Mum would call me in for tea, then I might watch an hour or so of telly before bath and bed (no showers back then).

I invariably got sunburned in the summer.  I am cursed with skin that turns bright red then peels to reveal a total lack of colour.  I've never had a tan in my life.  Sunblock was unheard of; mum managed to find Piz-Buin oil in some ridiculously low factor but I still burned and peeled every year.  On our few holidays abroad, I blistered - not the tiny 5p-sized blisters you get on your heels, but huge water-filled blisters covering my entire shoulders, and on one memorable year, my face too.

During the summer holidays, six weeks of running wild and being left to our own devices all day long, we quickly tired of the little local park - three swings and a sandpit - and devised our own entertainment.  A favourite was a washing line, strung in a loop from the first floor railings of our flats, forming an excruciatingly painful swing.  You could either sit in it and have it cut into your bum, or stand in it, which was less painful but with the added danger that it was further to fall.  Onto concrete.  Which we invariably did, as washing line isn't really up to that sort of strain and would snap at the moment of greatest height or velocity.  Nobody actually broke a bone, which is a miracle in itself.

One of our neighbours took pity on us all one day, and piled us into the luggage bit of his Cortina estate car, with the back seats folded down.  There was a car park in front of our flats about 50 yards across, and he floored it at one end and screeched to a halt at the other, with about six of us tumbling about in the back screaming with laughter.  Then he did it in reverse.  Over and over again, with every kid from the nearby streets lining up on the kerb clamouring for a go.  Harmless fun...

These were the days when whisky was routinely rubbed on babies gums to ease teething; when the cure for a cold was being sent to bed with a large mug of milk with loads of sugar and a shot of scotch (at age four!), when butter was good for you and yogurt was for weirdo health-food hippies.

If someone bullied you, you were told to hit 'em back.  If a teacher told you off, you hung your head and hoped to hell she wouldn't tell your parents.  If your parents smacked you, you'd cry, and say sorry, and five minutes later have forgotten all about it (but hopefully learned how to NOT earn another one).

We had permanently skinned knees, from the concrete or tarmac under the climbing frames and swings.  We never washed our hands before dinner, we played marbles on drain covers, we made go-karts out of old wheels and milk crates.

Good times.

I will learn Something New. I will.

There’s a somewhat surreal quality about the first week of September.  In the last few days of August the house is full of laughter, noise and scrambling feet, as children make the most of the last few precious days off school.  And then suddenly, after one manic morning of uniforms, brushing hair and packing lunches, the house is silent and empty.  I always feel a bit lost the first day of term; after six weeks of lazy mornings, days out, holidays, suntan lotion and getting sand out of places sand really shouldn’t be, I am left standing in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, wondering what to do with the endless childless days ahead.  Of course there’s the ubiquitous laundry pile that never seems to get any smaller, and the house always needs tidying and dusting, but after all the mayhem and fun of the summer, termtime seems so drab and monotonous.

This year I am determined to do something different, something I have always wanted to do but never seem to have had the time.  I have enrolled in a local Indian cookery course!  The lovely tutor, Saira, assures me that even the most amateur cook will be able to produce delicious, beautiful Indian meals.  I would settle for ‘edible’, as my most notorious ‘kitchen experiment’ was even rejected by the birds and wildlife in our rural garden, and had to be removed by my husband.  With a spade.  So, come September, I will be waving my daughter off to school, and embarking on an adventure of my own - hopefully to emerge, six months later, with a newfound skill in the kitchen and a repertoire of fantastic Indian recipes that will be the envy of all my friends. 

I can’t wait for the first time that my husband suggests take-away for Saturday tea.  I will leap into action, flying around Tesco’s and filling my trolley with nutritious, healthy chicken, vegetables and spices, and then I will disappear into the kitchen and two hours later - Voila!  A fabulous home-cooked Indian meal!  My family will gather round with gasps of admiration and eagerly devour the feast… er, no, that’s not right.  Who am I kidding.  My husband won’t care if the food comes from my own fair hands or the High Street Tandoori, and my daughter will wrinkle her nose and request fish fingers and beans. 

But I don’t care.  I will have learned something NEW, just for me, and I will be proud of it!