Friends, food and feeling frumpy – a musing

That was a bit of an odd weekend in all.

First of all, the head-hunter calling on Friday – v flattering to be told I’ve made a good impact ‘in the local marketplace’ and that someone wants to pay me lots more money…but I really don’t know if I want the job. I can just about manage financially at the moment, and still do the things I want most of the time as long as I’m careful with the other stuff.

So my overwhelming instinct is to stay where I am. But I’ve made career decisions before based on liking the people, work culture, values etc and I’m not sure it’s always been for the best in the long run.  People change, companies change.

So is it safer to go where the money is, and ensure I’m financially secure…assuming it all works?

In any case, as far as the weekend goes, it’s safe to say that I’ve been a little distracted.  This possibly explains why my choice of clothes was a little awry.

Then came Saturday: just the small matter of a 3-hour drive to my friend’s house, to get the train & tube to the Vintage Festival. Just made it in time for the train. Vintage festival was fab, beautiful, wonderfully dressed people everywhere and some great music.  The most points go to the Warehouse dance area in the basement complete with smoke, strobes, star shaped lights…

Signposting left a little to be desired, and I did wonder if it’s only worth buying a ticket after exhausting the possibilities of the free bits (could have spent all day around the clothes stalls) but my main problem of the day was feeling frumpy.

I tried a few outfits, settled on one that I thought was cute, and set off, but by the time I arrived and met up with my terribly glamorous friend and her equally beautiful friends, I felt terribly lumpy and ungainly. My outfit went from cute to baggy in one fell swoop and my waist seemed to have disappeared…

And unlike my friends, I did not have a cute, vintage dressed daughter with me to distract people. Things got slightly better when I bought the most gorgeous flowery hair clip to distract people from the rest of me, but the day was terribly hard work.

There was also no lunch until about 3pm as my friend simply never seems to eat…

So I came to three conclusions during the day:

• I realised how important it is to me to feel comfortable with what I’m wearing and I particularly hate being underdressed, so it’s always better to err on the side of ‘too glamorous’ (yes, one of my friends was right, even though it was hot, I really should have done the burlesque thing)
• I eat an awful lot – by 9 in the evening, after the late lunch & no snacks, I was really, really hungry & my friend was still breezing past the gorgeous smells wafting from the food stalls, totally oblivious to the idea that people might actually stop and buy something to eat
• I really do rely on appreciation and compliments to bolster my mood.

I have yet to decide what to do about the second point, other than ensuring the food I do eat is healthy, and ensuring I spend enough time at the gym.  But at least I now know what I’ve suspected for some time, at least some people who claim to be ‘naturally thin’ simply eat a lot less  😛

The worrying thing is that although I love my friend, I am feeling reluctant to spend much time with her as I really didn’t enjoy the way I felt on Saturday. She has a 40th birthday coming up, so I need to plan my outfit very carefully to get this out of my system.   I think a corset may be required.  And I’ll probably get my hair done beforehand…

Sunday brought a day’s flying and trip to the seaside: off to the airfield, route planning, refuelling, then back in charge of an aeroplane.  A beautiful flight, bit hazy & bumpy but most relaxing and even a chance to try out the GPS en route.  Good company, excellent crab sandwiches for lunch and a chance to get away from everything.  I can’t quite remember what I was wearing, but my waist seems to have reappeared, or at least I wasn’t conscious of whether it was absent or not.

I’m also pleased to report that I wore my beautiful new wrap dress today and felt fabulous, so much so that I spent a while today trying to work out why there isn’t a female equivalent of the phrase ‘clothes maketh the man’

And the moral of the story is: not sure, I’ll leave you to work that one out.