Stockings

God help me.

Every winter I think, "Must stock up on pants before next winter so as not to have to endure stocking horror ever ever again." And then summer comes round and I forget as I frolic, bare-legged, and then the first chilly days reappear and I pull my part-nylon, part-elastene friends from the drawer and sigh and say, "That's right. Pants. I was supposed to buy pants."

I recently bought some stockings without really paying attention to what I was buying. When I got them home I saw that they were called "body support". When I got up the next morning and attempted to wrestle myself into them, I saw that by "body support" what the manufacturer actually meant was "pressure bandage". Even though there was a nasty little nip in the air, by the time I'd wrangled my unwilling limbs into the unyielding fabric (which put me in mind of some kind of theory of hosiery relativity) I had worked myself into a sheen of perspiration. I flopped back on the bed, panting madly (for all the wrong reasons) and thought, "I cannot be the only person who suffers like this. Dear Lord, am I all alone in the world??"

It was a real moment of angst. Then Grumpy yelled from the lounge room, "Mel and Kochie are on!" and it was like...well, like that guy who saw the rainbow thing. You know. After the flood. I mean, I had hope.

If I was dieting, these stockings would be ideal because their grip around my guts was enough to put me off food the whole time I was wearing them. Then, of course, there was the small difficulty with getting the material to work with me so as to achieve the sitting position.

Standing at your computer all day gives you a killer backache. At least my legs were encased tight enough to ward off varicose veins.