It happened today as I was dressing to go to bookworm club (that’s why I put on my Kindle reader while I was painting earlier this week – in my case it should be called ‘earworm club’). Anyway, as per usual when I’m feeling a bit on the chubby side, I tried on several things but nothing felt quite right and each discarded garment, sometimes tried on more than once, landed up on the bed. After the great reception enjoyed by my surprised green and black harem trousers yesterday I put on my multi-coloured harem pants; the pants looked good but somehow, it seemed to me, none of my tops were suitable for bookclub – pretty yet demure, and not too strappy, low or sexy, was the order of the day. All my tops of the appropriate colour came into the category of the latter.

Perhaps half an hour had elapsed, and desperation was beginning to set in, when I remembered that I had bought a nice, generous-sized pair of white pedal-pusher pants recently; they hadn’t even been worn yet on account of all the rain we’ve had of late.

“Oh my God!” I thought as I struggled to make the waistband meet.

“Crikey,” I said aloud as I looked in the full-length mirror and noted that, having managed to pull up the unwieldy zip at last (after a great battle), the surplus around the girth of my abdomen had been pushed upwards, unflatteringly, above my waist.

“How much weight must I have gained in eight days?” I wondered, “What on earth have I been eating?”

Suddenly the weight of the world was on my shoulders and I felt ugly and despondent. My thoughts ran to drastic actions, such as beginning the dreaded Dukan Diet again.

“Lucky I rejoined Dawlish Leisure Club,” I thought to myself and I envisaged getting up at six o’clock every morning for the next two weeks to go to the gym and the swimming pool before taking long bike rides (weather permitting).

Still wearing the cutting reminder of my recent sloth and extreme over-indulgence, I continued to search the wardrobe for something pretty, demure and fitting (literally) when I came across another pair of new white three-quarter length pants and the penny dropped…

A few moments later, and dressed in soft pink and white, I was on top of the world again. I had even found a pink ribbon to slip around the waistband of the pants and tie in a pretty bow. The small-sized pants, bought last year in the sales by a very optimistic me, had joined the top of the pile on the bed. I put on some shiny pink lipstick, picked up the cakes I had made, and went off to see the bookworms. A nice spread had been laid on by our host and some of the other bookworms, and I cast aside all thoughts of the famous diet torture devised by Dr Dukan. Well, I deserved it – I had had such a nasty shock…