Festive Schedule - and a little real-life Christmas vignette 🎄

Woah there, December, you move to fast!

But how wonderful it is to be here again, in the belly swelling season of mince pies, Christmas parties, mulled wine and chocolate Santas! Already girls across the world are patting jumper-clad paunches, announcing, with a little sigh of regretful acceptance (mingled with just a tiny note of excitement) that all attempts to eat healthily and exercise are now on hold until the new year.

The great thing about this promise is that, having said it out loud, they eat even more than they would have done otherwise.

A little real-life story to illustrate. Incidentally, the girl mentioned below became the main inspiration for Emily in The Perfect Dress.

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Every year, our friend group has a get together in the weeks between Christmas and New Year. We usually just go out for a meal and drinks, but a few years ago we took it a step further and booked a lovely cottage in Wales.

Naturally the guilty pleasure I look forward to is seeing whether any of the girls have put on weight. At the time, most of them were the comfortable, just-turning-thirty type. Office workers and managers who don't take any serious exercise but certainly wouldn't have been called fat. They all generally dressed conservatively, in a way that makes it tricky to gauge what their figures were really like. 

Digression: From an FA's perspective, what are everyone's preferences, clothes-wise? On one hand, I'm always thrilled by the chubby bulges and unintended wobble of a revealing and too-tight outfit. It's such a turn on to ponder the excessive eating and laziness that have caused clothes which once fit perfectly to squeeze so mercilessly, the denial or stubbornness that have made a girl wear them despite the discomfort.

On the other hand, sometimes less revealing clothing can be  just as exciting. The unknown element frees your imagination to really run wild, and there's the thought that maybe they've dressed more conservatively because they've been getting a bit bigger. And of course, if something is revealed—a little stretch for a high cupboard lifting a loose fitting top to reveal a protruding tum; a jumper rising as they lift their arms to put on a coat to show a pudgy bellybutton and pale squishy lovehandles—then it can be all the more exciting.

Such was the case on this holiday, when, after much drinking and eating, someone brilliantly proposed a game of Twister. One of the best looking girls in the group, naturally curvier and drunker than most, took to it with particular excitement. I'll never forget how her plump rump warped the back pockets of her jeans as it swelled skywards, her top sliding down the smooth fleshiness of her lower back to reveal well-developed love handles as she transitioned into a yoga-like downward facing dog pose. Her puffy mince-pie paunch becoming visible, sagging towards the mat and jiggling with her snorting and giggling as she tried to contort plump inflexible limbs into improbable positions.

Then the inevitable happened. With a squeal she tumbled and landed flat on her back. Chuckling drunkenly, she spread her arms wide like a snow angel, before placing both hands on her quivering tum. 'Uff,' she groaned happily, lying on her back and tugging her smart white jumper down over her exposed tummy, and then patting her sides repeatedly as one might do after a satisfying meal, making the squishy cashmere-clad pillow of flesh quiver. She raised her head, gazing at her tummy as if realising its existence for the first time. 

'Ugh, need to get to the gym!' she grumbled cheerfully, quickly adding: 'next year.'

Most people, including this girl and her boyfriend, went to bed soon after that, but a few of us stayed up drinking and swapping old stories. After a few hours there was a creaking of stairs, and who should come down but our cashmere cutie, now enticing in silk pyjamas. She headed into the kitchen, there was the pop of a toaster, and she emerged a few moments later with a couple of large butter-and-jam-slathered crumpets. Rather than go back upstairs, she joined us around the fire, munching intently while we sat chatting, before dusting off her hands and going back to bed.

Clearly the huge roast dinner, peanuts, gingerbread snaps and chocolates she'd guzzled throughout the evening hadn't been enough to satisfy her developing paunch. 

The funny thing is, I don't think she'd have come down for crumpets if she hadn't made that commitment to the gym earlier in the evening, a sort of subconscious carte blanche to eat even more. I also got the impression she didn't want her boyfriend to know about her little late-night snack, which was quite cute in itself. 

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Hope you enjoyed that. I feel like I'm rambling a lot recently. Here's a little update on what I'll be posting in December.

• Take These Away From Me! - The follow-on to I've got to stop eating these, last year's Christmas story featuring Kari and Yaz. I'm working on a pic of Yaz to go with this, though her look isn't quite coming out right yet.
  
  
• Gemma's Nightmare before Christmas - Congratulations to SpartacusDA, who won November's Guess The Chubster competition, and chose Gemma as the subject of this year's Christmas pic (great choice!) and gave me an idea to work with. It's great to return to working on one of my most popular characters - and definitely the one I'd most like to spend Christmas with. The title is just a provisional one for now.
  
  
• Time permitting, I'll see if I can get another story/pic/both posted before the new year.
  
  

Happy holidays! 🎅🎅🎅