🏠 Wednesday weigh-in: A Tubby Tenant Interrupted

Evening all 🙋‍♂️☕

I can see this becoming a tradition (read: running joke), where these Wednesday weigh-ins are never actually posted on a Wednesday.

At least there was a decent reason this week, which is that I was getting Chapter 11 of The Lady wot lunched a little too much finished. I know it was only a short one, but I'd been tearing what's left of my hair out with that Gemma and Peter scene for months. Keeping it true to the characters and deciding how far to go with things felt like a real challenge. In the end, I just tried to approach it in a spirit of fun - and overall I'm happy with how it turned out. At any rate, if feels like a weight has been lifted. (Subtle hint there at what might be coming up next for our plump protagonists.)

That said, I'm conscious that both chapter 10 and 11 are very descriptive - by which I mean they don't advance the story particularly quickly. But perhaps this descriptive stuff is what people want the most. Sometimes I wonder if I get caught up too much in character and plot and intrigue and forget that, in the end, this is fetish writing. I'd be interested in any thoughts on this. Let me know in the comments, or send me a message.

Writing TLWL took up most of my time in the past week (the stuff I'd posted and also drafting the next chapter, which always happens in tandem with writing the current one, as ideas spring up). But I've also been working on the Sam & Tiff pic from last week's preview, and the short one-off story I mentioned last week, featuring Lauren, Sarah and Zoe for the weekly writing prompt. I should have both finished and posted either this weekend or early next week.

In the meantime, here's a little real-life event I thought was FA storyworthy. I hope you enjoy it!

🏠

A Tubby Tenant Interrupted
I've recently been accompanying a friend on some flat viewings. All out of the goodness of my heart, of course, and not at all because I envisioned glossy estate agents with jelly bellies straining their blouse buttons and Holly-style hips swelling out smart pencil skirts. (The flats we're viewing probably have too many stairs for an Abby. Also, narrow corridors.)

Alas, no luck on that front so far. However, I was treated to a very pleasant encounter at the weekend just gone.

Usually when we've been to view a flat, it's been empty. But in this case, when our (disappointingly skinny) estate agent guide opened the door, we discovered that the current tenant was home.

She was sitting at a dining table having her lunch, and clearly hadn't been expecting us, for as we entered she lifted her head and froze mid-chew, staring at us from above bulging cheeks, like a cartoon chipmunk caught in the act of stuffing its face in someone else's larder.

She was in her mid-twenties, One of those thick-all-over girls, where the fat seems to have been added in smooth dollops over the years and then moulded around by a sculptor who'd spent a lot of time in a Reubens gallery. The straps of a grey crop top disappeared into fleshy, slightly slumpy shoulders and the weight of a wide-set bosom was spread over a protruding upper abdomen.

But what really stood out, quite literally, were her cheeks, which were so piggishly crammed with food they looked as if they'd bloated up from a bee sting and were taking over her face:  squashing her lips into a pursed expression, bulging so wide and so round that they were pushing her sleek chestnut hair aside as if parting curtains and creating a kind of canyon around her little button nose.

There was a half-eaten Greggs sausage and bean pasty on her plate, alongside a half-eaten sausage roll, and I reckon she'd crammed in a huge bite of one and then the other, so that both were in her mouth at once, to get a mix of flavours. If we'd arrived a few seconds earlier, perhaps she'd have been holding one in each chubby hand.

Beside her plate was a still-bulging Greggs bag, and based on its shape (and hers) I'd have put money on there being a Greggsnut within, or at least some lesser donut.

As we passed her, I sneaked a little side profile view, and realised that the fat wasn't so evenly distributed after all. A paunch of substantial proportions pushed into her lap under the table. Not enormous, but a fair reflection of the piggish way she'd stuffed her cheeks, and certainly big enough to indicate gluttony rather than just general overindulgence and gym-dodging. It was squeezed into (and being squeezed by) a second skin of grey high-waisted yoga leggings, to which quite a few flakes of pastry adhered like small leaves, making it even easier to envisage her taking two hoggishly oversized bites of her pasties.

Perhaps it was because she was leaning forward slightly, but rather than covering her belly, the waistband of her leggings was cutting deep into it, creating that classic double-bulge, so that it looked like a pair of water balloons stacked on top of each other. They wobbled vaguely as she reached for her coffee.

We passed to the far side of the room, and while my friend inspected the ceiling, I inspected the young  tenant's rump - and I'll swear she felt my eyes on her, because she seemed to lean forward slightly and thrust her bottom back a little in the chair, as if to pull the grey fabric taut and eliminate any puckering signs of cellulite. It just made her bum look even bigger, almost as tall as her admittedly fairly short back, and notably wider than her torso, not to mention the chair it was perched on.

My friend turns to me with a knowing grin as we head up the stairs. 'Bet you like that one.'

I did. And I was about to like her even more.

The master bedroom was dominated by a large bed stacked with oversized pillows - the kind of huge frilly puffed-up white articles you sprawl yourself out on for lounging purposes - impractically plump for actually sleeping on. At the end of the bed was a low chest of drawers, and above it a vast TV mounted on the wall. The walls were montaged with pictures showing our tenant on nights out. The usual stuff: here smiling and leaning into a boyfriend; there grinning and clinking shot glasses with her girlfriends, and so on. The timeline was pretty typical. Early university party pics showing her (and her friends) looking almost skinny, gradually growing thicker up into the later ones, small bulges appearing in the waist of their dresses as the booze and kebab grease started to build up. By the time of her office night out pics, she was notably wider of hip and rounder in the face and neck. But even here she was considerably lighter than she looked in the flesh. Either she hadn't been on as many nights out recently, or wasn't too happy about how the photos looked and hadn't put them up.

The pièce de résistance (or lack of résistance), however, was a half-eaten family sized bar of chocolate on the bedside table, its creased silver foil glinting in the light from the window. A large tooth-marked crescent indicated that, rather than snapping off chocolate squares, the greedy girl had been chomping on the whole bar.

The estate agent audibly clucked with irritation at the sight of it.

Meanwhile I was imagining our tubby tenant lounging amidst all those pillows, reposed like an unusually pale and plump Princess Jasmine, watching Netflix to relieve the day's stresses while mindlessly gnawing on that massive bar of chocolate, her free hand resting on a comfortably swelling paunch. I wouldn't have been surprised if the drawers on the bedside table were stacked with more treats. She didn't seem the type who'd want to traipse up and down the stairs. Not with those short legs and such a heavy wobbling bottom to haul around.

By the time we went downstairs our hungry hottie had finished her lunch and adjourned to the sofa, where she was stretched out, watching TV, with one hand propping up her head and the other limp over the side of her swollen paunch, which was a few bars of chocolate short of hanging over the edge of the sofa. She looked a bit sullen, and only grunted when we called goodbye. Perhaps she had a little indigestion from eating so quickly, or was frustrated at being prevented from heading straight upstairs for comfortable doze after her meal, with perhaps a little bite or two of chocolate.

Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, my friend couldn't be persuaded that a second viewing was urgently required! It does, however, seem like he'll be putting in an offer on the flat. So perhaps I'll see her around when I visit if she's staying in the area.

Here's to hoping!

All the best,

Hal x