Today my stomach feels like a cream puff, my boobs are bulging like water balloons and I have a treble chin! During the night my body has spread like dough. I eat chocolate, cakes, nuts, chips and bananas for breakfast, but I am still hungry. I feel tired and dreary as I trudge around getting the kids to school and trying to avoid the irritating idiots who people the world. I regret a stop at the supermarket immediately, when the elderly clutter the aisles. Meeting my friend Karen to go clothes shopping, annoys me further because the sales staff are positively evil, leaping out from behind displays to offer me jeans and little jumpers while smirking at my fatness. Karen tries to get me to buy jeans that make my bottom look like a giant beanbag; some friend!I get home and boyfriend Gary leers at me and pretends to fancy the gross lump that I’ve become. When I yell at him for being such a dishonest creep he says I’m being unreasonable!

Later, Mum Cathy babysits and we go out. I have a large glass of Shiraz, a starter, main course, pudding, another glass of Shiraz, and chocolate on the way home. The waiter is slow, the table not the one I wanted and nerd Gary chats about the stupidest things; vacuum cleaners, dentists and money! I want to shout, what about life, the universe, eternity? But I just munch my apple pie and custard and feel the weight sludge down and add itself to my heaviness. Nerd brings me tea in the morning. It’s strong and sweet and he looks the same. The sun is shining and I feel a surge of love and beam at him while I sip my tea. Later I walk through streets of paving stones and people, to meet him for lunch. The elderly have speeded up, my clothes fit and my bottom feels small and cheerful. Life is just wonderful.

‘Mum you aren’t going to go out in that!’ says Chloe as I sweep glamorously down the stairs ready for an evening out with Gary. The babysitter feigns deafness.

“What’s wrong with it?” I ask, reasonably enough.

“Everything!” Chloe says, storming off, trampling my confidence underfoot, without bothering to help scrape it up again.

In the bathroom mirror the figure hugging red top and French skirt made me look young and sexy. The downstairs mirror is making me look like one of those toilet roll cover dolls.

Gary arrives. “You look nice,” he says.

Nice! Not sexy, attractive, amazing or gorgeous, just nice. “No I don’t., ‘ I mumble. ‘ I’m going to change,”

“We’ll be late, tables booked for eight. Anyway you look fine.”

Fine, like nice, means nothing. He looks gorgeous but I’m now too miffed to tell him.

Fashion after thirty is one big headache. How will I know when I am mutton dressed as lamb unless someone tells me, but how can I believe a child who wants to look like Amy Winehouse?

I just want to be reasonably fashionable for my age. I wouldn’t wear a smock top made of cobwebs or hipsters half-way down my bottom with a thong hoiked up my back because (a) I would look ridiculous and (b) even IF I didn’t, I know exactly what would happen. Ben would swear he doesn’t know me, especially if he was with his mates. Then he would wear his most threadbare ripped jeans with the huge hole in the bottom, and his scruffiest, scariest Goth hoodie, every time I wanted the family to look reasonably respectable. Chloe would shriek loudly, preferably in public; ‘I am NOT having a mother dressed like that,’ and storm off either in a major sulk or floods of tears depending on the audience. Timmy would roar with laughter, draw a picture of me which exaggerated every flaw and secretly give the outfit to Fubby to chew.

I would hate to become one of those grannies looking like decorated Christmas trees when the needles have dropped; belt sized skirts atop vein knobbled legs, sparkly tops showing creased leather cleavage; but I don’t plan to enter beige-cardi territory either.

At dinner Gary stokes my leg under the table. “You look gorgeous tonight, “he says. “Really fantastic.”