The Fatslayer Chronicles

There are certain things I’m looking forward to doing when I’m skinny, and one of them is having a proper bathe.

In movies when you see a woman in the tub she is always totally submerged from the neck down in bubbles and water, with tendrils of hair fetchingly dampening in the steam.

That’s never the case with me.

If I bathe the water barely covers half of me, and a substantial part of me is always poking above the waterline, so that I resemble a goose-pimply wallowing hippo. If I lay on my back my belly and boobs breach the surface, and if I lie face down my arse rises up like a batch of over-yeasted white bread dough.

I don’t imagine that either of these are particularly flattering looks, but luckily K loves me enough to overlook such shortcomings. I discourage him from entering the bathroom too often when I’m in the tub, though, just in case he gets the notion to climb in there with me – there’s barely enough room for me, and tub sex is only fun when there’s a bit of elbow room and plenty of deep suds. I think I’ll leave such shenanigans to the skinny brigade.

I’ve just bought some bath salts so that when I’m finally skinny enough I can wallow in strawberry scented bubbles with only the tip of my nose above the surface. When I can do that, I’ll know I’m close to reaching my goal.

Talking of getting to goal, what else am I looking forward to?

Hmmm...hugging my shins, definitely.

My whole life I’ve never been flexible enough to pull my knees up to my chest and to clasp my hands in front of my shins, and it’s always been something I’ve wanted to do. When it’s done successfully, it looks so effortlessly athletic.

I used to blame my inability to perform this simple manoeuvre on the shortness of my arms, but really it was because there’s always a big pillow of pannus preventing my knees from getting close enough to my chest. I’d need arms like an orang-utan to be able to grasp my shins at the moment.

So when I can do that effortlessly, I’ll know I’m close to goal.

I’ll also know that I’m close to goal when I can walk around barelegged in the summer without my thighs chafing together, and when I can browse around the shops for a whole day without feeling as if my spine and the soles of my feet have been mashed with a hammer. Those will be happy days when they eventually arrive – I’ve just got to be patient.

I have had a couple of victories already, though.

I never used to be able to cross my legs at the knee (fat thighs and calves), or to reach round far enough to scratch between my shoulder blades with my fingernails. If you imagine me sitting splay legged like a seated sumo wrestler, scratching my back with a wire coat-hanger, your mental image won’t be too far adrift from my former reality.

Now, though, I can cross my legs at the knee like any other sophisticated woman, and scratch an itch between my shoulder blades with ease. I do both regularly, in fact, just to prove that I can – but nobody seems to notice that this is quite a triumph for me.

Painting my toe-nails has become a lot easier too (that used to be such a chore), as has bending down to pick up things I’ve dropped on the floor. I used to dread having to bend over in crowded places to pick things up – if I’d spotted a £20 note I’d probably have made the effort, but for a pencil it just wasn’t worth the huffing and puffing and the humiliation.

It’s such a small thing, to be able to bend over without a second thought and to pick something off the floor – and yet I was almost unable to do it! How sad is that? Now, though, I‘m as bendy as a pipe-cleaner – dropped objects don’t scare me any more, no siree – if I ever need to make my living by poop-scooping or litter-picking I’ll be all set!

It strikes me that weight has affected my life in so many trivial and seemingly unimportant ways. A little humiliation here, a smidgeon of mortification there – it all adds up in the end. There was always the ever-attendant dread that I’d get stuck in a turnstile, or that I’d get into an elevator and it would set off the over-loaded beeper, or that seven other people would suggest we all share the same taxi, or that some skinny sadist would suggest we all do an army assault course to help us in our teambuilding.

Life is definitely easier now that I’m on the road to skinny – I need to remember that when I’m having a bad day and it seems easier just to give up and hit the doughnuts.