Knickers

Two pounds on this week, which I’m not too mortified about because I know where it’s come from (stuffing my face with an Chinese and an Indian) but I am back on the straight and narrow, my newly plugged in and moved fridge is now full of salad and vegetables. I’ve also set myself a challenge this week of trying to cook some healthy recipes I’ve never tried before, so later on I’m off to the supermarket with an actual proper shopping list!

  Whilst I’ve been unpacking my clothes, I was amazed at the things I own that I’d forgotten about. I was shocked by the number of pairs of magic knickers I own! I appear to have them in a variety of colours and sizes. I think for most women a pair of magic knickers are a staple wardrobe item, they tuck you in, suck you up and then weirdly push the fat they’re sucking and tucking in out under your arm pits, because lets face it that excess fat has to spill out somewhere! 

I remember talking about magic knickers at work once and a lady I used to work with who came up to me in the kitchen to ask me what they were.

  “Jenny” was one of these ladies who was so posh you couldn’t really work out how old she was. She still referred to her Mum as “Mummy” and used words like “aghast” in general conversation. I think she was about mid 40’s to early 50’s and had a cracking figure. She was always off down the gym and would even go running on holiday. I remember her describing in minute detail a run she’d been on in some Spanish hills. My holidays usually consist of me coming back knowing the recipe of a local cocktail, which is probably why she had her figure and me mine. It’s probably no great surprise that she had no clue what magic knickers were. I remember explaining what they were and how they worked. The look on her face must have been very similar to the one that Leonardo Da Vinci got when he was trying to explain to his mate that he’d had this idea for a flying thing that could be called a helicopter. “Jenny” wandered out the kitchen looking aghast (see I can use it in general conversation too) and I can only assume she went back into her office to speak to the other skinny ladies in there about whether they’d ever heard of “magic knickers”

  Now I’ve found my magic knickers again, I shall be wearing them again devil may care. As I pegged them on the line yesterday I thought about my Aunty Dolly. My Aunty Dolly lived her whole life in a picturesque cottage in Blackwell, she was born there, sadly died there and never ventured as far as Nottingham. She was one of those gloriously bonkers Auntys, who when you left her house, she’d send you off with half a tea service, a tomato and a calendar from 1982. Her and my Gran had been friends since they were little and I remember taking my Gran over to see her. As I sat on a stool drinking my tea, they started talking about knickers. Aunty Dolly said she never hung her “breeches” on the line because she didn’t want her neighbours looking at her pants. My Gran pointed out that her neighbours probably thought she didn’t wear any. A few days later my Aunty Dolly phoned my Gran to say she’d thought of a solution to the “breeches” issue she’d bought some stunt pants and would be hanging them on the line, so her neighbours would never get to see her real pants. There’s a part of me that has always hoped my Aunty Dolly’s stunt pants were some black lacy thongs.