I am 42 years old.

I’ve have borne two children.  One of them was 9lbs 6oz in the old measure.  So we shan’t chat too much here about what’s stretched and what’s not (this isn’t Mumsnet* after all).  And it has gotten hot here, in my part of the world.

***Cue the Darth Vader scary music***

It’s time to go shopping for bathers.

Like I said, I’m 42 years old, and in that time I have learned two things about shopping for bikinis:

1.  Only buy Seafolly. The rest are rubbish.  They fade and stretch and pill, so it’s really just smoke and mirrors and false economy.

2. It does not matter ONE BIT how you are feeling about yourself or your body.  On the day you go bathers shopping you will feel like shit by the end. Bright lights, tiny 19 year old shop assistants who only help you when their FB feeds are silent and trying to stuff your knickers into the bikini bottoms so you can see what you’ll look like galavanting on the beach like a Libra Fleur ad.  So you might as well go on a day you feel ordinary anyway.  That way at least it can’t get much worse.

Currently, I’m in need of a haircut.  I haven’t waxed or plucked or defoliated in any way.  My skin is pasty.  So that day, was today.

I took a glug of Rescue Remedy and went into Sea Elements.

Bright lights: tick

Lady-girl at the counter: tick

Racks of scant garments in sickening shades of iridescence: tick

I don’t have a particularly big rig, and I’m between a size 8 and 10, but let’s just say gravity has not been kind.  What little breast-tissue was not hoovered up by the two parasites I spawned, has definitely gone south.  And a bit east and west.  With not a northerly in sight.  So I require ‘assistance’.  Unfortunateiy, this assistance is limited, as I abhor strap marks, so I also require a strapless top.  Let’s call that problem challenge #1.  Secondly, I used to have legs that ran, and a bottom that knew how to boogie.  Now I have legs that prefer a nice couch and a cuppa, and a derriere with more dimples than Shirley Temple, aka travesty challenge #2.  I may have already mentioned that I’m 42 years old.  My vintage means that fluorescents, iridescents and scintillants were for years long gone by.  Florals and animal prints are still in the future.  Which doesn’t leave much, I know: conundrum challenge #3.

I marched up to Lady-girl and explained the parameters of my purchase.  She blinked a few times, doe-eyed, then nodded.  Challenge accepted.

I absconded to the shoebox cubicle and paced in the (almost) nude waited patiently for her to bring me some options.  And bring  she did.  A veritable motherlode of lycra.  Stripes, zig-zags, spots and plains.  Bottoms that went up your bottom and bottoms that looked like your Nan’s bottom. Tops that lifted up and pushed up and foofed up.  The change-room floor looked like the remains of a vanquished Sunday-cyclist peloton.  But none of them quite right.

The she handed me the final pair.  ***Finger-of-god light and harps***

Perfect.

So I left with these new bathers.

They have straps.  They are floral.  They have pink fluro.

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED IN THERE?

SEE FOLLY.

The End

Have you been bathers shopping this year?

Do you call them bathers. togs, swimmers or cozzies?

* Mumsnet discussing penis dunking. Very funny.