The tearing hair look not so good then.

I have to go clothes shopping next week. I reckon nearly anyone else *in the whole world* (that’s official, I did a survey) would be really excited about this but although I am excited about having a night out and a new outfit to wear, I’m truly dreading the process of shopping. I’m hopeless at clothes shopping. I belong to that particular variety of woman which is pear shaped apart from the plummy cleavage, making me more figure of eight than any fruit I can think of. I’m short, I own one pair of shoes and all my pants are elastic trunky ones. I probably do have tummy control knickers hiding somewhere in the deeper recesses of my clothes boxes, but I’m slightly afraid they wouldn’t fit, which is an alarming notion if ever I heard one. Though frankly, controlling a tummy that has held 6 children is probably a tall order by any standards. By tomorrow my hair will have been tamed and teased into something that will look pretty (pretty okay that is) and I’ll drag out the make up kit the children didn’t ravage for panto last year and then all that is left is the outfit. What I need is some app/widget/plugin where the online fashion shop of the moment takes a photo of you, effortlessly matches clothes to your shape and colour and size and sends you out a package to your door which fits perfectly. (Fits me, not the door).

I’m generally about as interested in clothes as a cheetah is fond of discussing vegan restaurants, my children are (naturally enough) getting far more interested in fashion. Fran is the only one to sit more on my side of the fence (though she does get out of pyjamas more often than I do) and her nods in the direction of fashion are mostly in favour of labelled dancewear. So long as she is comfy and can do the splits, she’s happy (thereby having one more requirement of clothing than I do and I bet you can guess which!) Recently my sister gave her some hand-me-downs from her most recent skinny-trendy phase and Fran has been rocking the tank top preppy look for the first time. Maddy has always been able to put together a look in her head with available clothing and Josie is similar. Amelie would but she’s too busy doing her hair most of the time; she however has bagged that curious skill that supermodels would kill for, where she can hurl on anything, screw her hair up in a hurried pile and tumble out of her bedroom looking as if a stylist on a decent pay packet just spent 6 hours on her. I have no idea where she got that from because it sure wasn’t me.

However.

Next week I will go shopping and if I’m sounding ungrateful for the opportunity, I promise I’m not, just nervous that I’ll fail to live up to expectations and look nice in anything. Since I’m no Imelda Marcos, the outfit I find will have to have one additional specific requirement. It will have to match my one and only pair of shoes. But they are THESE shoes and so that makes it all just fine.