Lexin

I’m arranging to go to my Auntie Queenie’s funeral on the 9th of November – what a palaver it all is.

The village she lived in, Thorne (South Yorkshire), has two stations, and it has taken me three days to get my waffly Auntie Peggy to tell me which one is most convenient for them to collect me from and for the church. My brother, who is not nearly as waffly, would have given me a lift at least from Doncaster, but he can’t go as he can’t get the leave from his employer.

That leaves me practically on my own, as the only people I’ll know at this jamboree are my Auntie Peggy, her husband Geoff, and their daughter Margaret. I’ve never met Auntie Queenie’s daughter, my cousin Diane (or not that I remember – I may have been to her wedding when I was a little girl) and only met her brother, my cousin John, once and that a long time ago, again when I was a child. Should be a laugh a minute.

Thinking about it, it will be a laugh in one way or another. Any given family event involving my family, something goes horribly wrong in a weird way, and the only way we can find to cope is to laugh at it because the alternative is to scream and throw things or have a massive row.

The only members of the family alive from my father’s generation are the aforementioned Peggy, Geoff and Uncle Sonnie’s widow, Pat. I don’t know if Pat will be there as I don’t know how well she got on with Queenie, or what her health is like. Auntie Pat must be in her 90s as well. I mean, some of my cousins are pensioners already. Of all the cousins, I’m the second youngest at 53 and my brother is the youngest at 51. It’s a sobering thought.

Still, tickets are booked and will be in the post to me tomorrow. I’ve elected to travel first class there and back as it was only a few quid more and I don’t want to be uncomfortable as well as miserable.

I shall have to look out a black handbag as I don’t feel my normal bright red handbag is suitable for a funeral, and I shall have to decide which of my coats is the best option. I have four coats: light grey, dark grey, bright green and navy blue but with checks. I’m leaning towards the dark grey.

What do people think? Suitable coat to wear to the funeral of an aunt you like but were not particularly close to?

I spent some time this lunchtime clicking through the options on buying sewing patterns. Hush, those of you who (justifiably) point out that I have a box of sewing patterns as yet unsewn. You can't have too many.

Or, perhaps you can take heart; it seems that even if a fat bird chooses to make her own clothes, there are few options. Perhaps it's me being too optimistic, but all that I could find seemed to be a variation on 'sack, tied up with string'.

Pull on trousers, yes. I can understand that women of more corpulent dimensions prefer not to do battle with zips on a daily basis. In general, I prefer that option myself. Still worse is that variation known as the 'side zip'. Preserve us, please, from the evil of the side zip – the last thing I want in the morning is to have to tie my arms in knots to get the zip to fasten. (And has anyone but me ever had one of those frocks where the zip is under the arm? Nightmare! I just don't have the spoons for that at any time.)

Having said that, why is it not possible to get frocks with swishy skirts for larger women? Why are we condemned to pencil or A-line skirts? It's not as if they make us look any less fat.

And that's the crux of it; I'm fat, I'm going to have to clothe a fat body. I've noticed this. But I don't want clothe it in variations on a sack. I can't make it look thinner (I don't believe your 'slimming cut' bollocks, I've been had by that before) but I want it to look shapely and interesting. Is it too much to ask?