So yesterday I go on my first bargain hunting trip to Oxford in the January sales. There’s this skirt in this shop, Whistles, reduced from £105 to £46 and I’m toying with the idea of buying it. So I go in to try it on just to see if it’s any good or not and I see that it has been reduced even further and it’s now only 24 pounds! So I think, brilliant, I’ve cheated Whistles out of twenty two big ones. But my happiness is short-lived as I realise that there aren’t any size 10s left. So I get all down about this because I really love this skirt (on account of it having multicoloured buttons randomly sewed onto it for no apparent reason). I’m about to go but there is one in size eight there and I can’t resist trying that on just to see what a great thing I’m missing and all that.
So I go into the changing room and I try it on and miracle of all miracles; it fits me perfectly! If anything, it’s even a bit loose on me. So I’m getting all ecstatic about having found this bargain skirt in my size but even more so about the fact that I have apparently gone through Christmas with all that eating and all that not moving that I’ve done, and instead of going up a size or two, I have gone the other way! But to be honest more than anything I’m excited about getting back home and writing to Gazankhan and trying to persuade him to pack up and come to LA with me where I’m certain with his genius new Anger Management course idea (burying people up to their lower lip in runny, human excrement) and my All eating Non moving diet, we are to start a couple of new trendy fads and bag ourselves a good few million dollars to put towards our pension.
I’m getting so excited about my new size and my new millions that the skirt with multicoloured buttons sewed onto it no longer looks like the great catch that I had thought it was earlier. So I say ‘come on my lovely size eight body, let’s go buy you some real clothes with our millions.’
I get dressed in my own clothes again, humming a happy little tune to myself, listening to the conversation a posh couple are having in the cubicle next to me ( -‘What do you think of this?’ -‘It’s marvellous darling. You must buy it. Only I don’t know what you are going to do about the bosoms.’ –‘Oh you don’t need to worry about that darling.’ –‘In that case, as I said, you must buy it. I’m still worried about the bosoms a little but if you are certain you can do something about them, then I guess there is nothing to worry about.’)
Next I go into East and I see these really lovely skirts. But unfortunately they are all out of any sizes under 12. So I pick up a size 12. Just so I can try it on and see it fall down and go, ‘Haaa haa you’re far too big for my skinny body.’ But I don’t get the chance to do that because the skirt does not fall! It sits there quite snugly even if you ask me.
I’m a bit confused at this point as you can imagine. All evidence point to the fact that whilst walking from Whistles to East, which are only about two minutes from each other, I have somehow gone up two dress sizes. Very strange, I know, but then again maybe not that strange compared to say, spontaneous human combustion.
Next I go to Miss Selfridge's. Turns out in this shop, I’m a non-mover at 10!

Half an hour, one person, three shops, three skirts, three sizes = One broken woman with shattered dreams and a very big question left unanswered; What exactly was that woman going to do about the bosoms?