Nora Ephron was right (as usual)

It’s mid-October, after your narrowboat holiday, and you’re gloating because you’ve lost half a stone through all the opening and closing of heavy lock gates and traipsing up and down the tow path, and your tight jeans finally fit you with moving room, and you are ecstatic.

And you sail through November feeling great. But as the days pass, and it rains and rains, you cycle less and less, and you also start thinking things like, “I am sick of Ryvita, wouldn’t just one real sandwich be nice?” And you’re still in that land where your jeans fit and your partner actually comments favourably on your size. You read something by Nora Ephron where she says - “At the age of 55 you will get a saggy roll just above your waist even if you are painfully thin,”and you want to ring her up and say “Hey, Nora! Not me!” but you can’t, because she recently died (sadly.)

And then December comes and you have just 4 mince pies in the whole of the month, and when you go to Sainsbury’s for the Christmas shop, you treat yourself to one of those clingy T shirts in a colour that suits you, and you like it so much you wear it with your jeans on Christmas Day with your silver necklace and silver earrings and you feel very glam.

And the family member who declines to be named arrives and sits in the kitchen to chat to you while you’re cooking, and he says, “Those jeans are very tight” and you think to yourself Yes, well, they were clean on today and they haven’t stretched yet, and you carry on shoving more and more food items into the cooker, unperturbed about said jeans, but bamboozled as to how you are going to find room in the cooker for every damn thing…

At lunchtime, the OFF Christmas Elf decides (uncharacteristically) to take some unposed photos of the assembled hordes enjoying their Christmas lunch, and he takes several from behind you.

Then in the evening, when the family have departed and you collapse on the sofa and look at said photos, you realise with horror that Nora was right, and you go back to her original quote and find her next paragraph - “This saggy roll just above your waist will be especially visible from the back and will force you to reevaluate half the clothes in your closet, especially the white shirts,” and you want to ring her up and say, “It’s not a roll, it’s a wodge!” and you know that the game is up, and it’s back on the treadmill of NO BREAD, NO CAKES, NO PUDDINGS, forever and ever, Amen.

And if you think I am going to show you one of the aforementioned photos, you’re nuts.