I’ve lived in London long enough to know that ‘pants’ mean knickers here. I do not have any new woolly knickers though – let’s make that unequivocally clear. But I can’t seem to write ‘woolly trousers’ because the ones I’m talking about are just as useful for sleeping in as walking around in, and it doesn’t seeming any way enticing or accurate to think about sleeping in a pair of woolly trou. I think of ‘woolly trousers’ and I think about old men in ancient sticky baggy stained suits eating dinner at 4:30pm at the RSA….you know what I mean? Anyway, that’s a preamble to introduce these (reduced from 44.95 to 18.99, then less 30% so WHO KNOWS what they cost because maths is hard) from Gap:

That there are my nicely baked thighs (recent products of Christmas-ham-and-two-boxes-of-Guylian-seashell-chocolates) cocooned in rainbow leggings which are sort of like track pants but not, because I would never allow myself to wear track pants. But then I’ve fallen down a k-esque instagram-hole which is populated by thin women about my age, who have kids and proper jobs and normally some nicely tasteful house somewhere in Peckham or Ealing and they spend a lot of time suggesting what to wear, including woolly soft pants of the tracksuit persuasion. They are INFLUENCING ME and I will admit it – it is working.

So I now own two pairs of soft woolly trousers – the first pair are these from Moda Operandi:

Which I ordered while exiled in deepest Devon while I was hankering after the city vibe brought to me via FOMO images on my phone. This was the very early days of Soft Pants Experimenting, back to a time when I thought I could do what the Ladies Of Instagram do, and that is to be:

a. very thin and so the pants would float around my legs in an urban kind of baggy way, and then

b. to be able to wear them with heels to elongate my legs and to do that stylist mashup thing of sporty vs lux in a nonchalant, ageless IT LOOKS A BIT NUTS BUT I KNOW WHAT IM DOING ORRIGHT? SHEESH DON’T YOU GUYS SPEND HOURS ON INSTAGRAM LEARNING THIS STUFF? kind of way

But, sadly, I came back to Londontown to find the little buggers tight and woolly and not stylish at all, mostly because my upper thighs aren’t streamlined or thin and so the stripes are erratic out of control wavy lines of mayhem. I tried it all with heels but I can’t walk, I just fall over like a robot trying to manage the stairs and my knickerline gives me two waists, outlined in black wool and punctuated with elastic ribbing. No returns, either, so I have to hide 100 pounds worth of miscalculated tight fluff until the moths mercifully take them.

The rainbow ones are different though – they are just going to be my Home Pants. I have never gone for Home Pants – I had an epiphany when I was about 12 (I may have mentioned this before) when I was home from school and I was wearing a purple t-shirt with black bike leggings and I was watching Beverley Hills 90210 and I was suddenly struck by how ordinary my Home Outfit made me feel. Frankly, it was a bit shit, and so I vowed and declared to always wear something that makes me feel a bit spiky and stylish and ready to run our the door to something better. Which is all very well, but I have spent 28 years wearing things that cut me across the waist and hurt my feet.

NO MORE!  NOT WITH RAINBOW HOME PANTS! This is what liberation feels like – a soft, creeping belly, warm calves, previously verboten vertical stripes encircling my hefty thighs and causing the children to stroke and sit and actually stay there, now that some sharp bit of poky denim zip isn’t making red marks on their baby skin. Also, I got slippers at Christmas and this too is a miracle. To have warm feet! To make whispery padding noises as I stumble over small bits of shape Lego!  It really makes me question what else I have been denying myself all these years.

Anyway we had our 20th wedding anniversary last week and we went to the movies and held hands. Then I took a photo of myself in the toilet. Here we are when we were thin, before the bone structure really took place and before we were burdened by where-to-live crises and hair loss:

And that’s me in the loo in tight jeans: