Monday – ‘I love you just the way you are’

Rows: Nil
Coffee: 2 but decaf (saintly)
Wine: Monday – need I say more?
Decibels: 20 (with small peak when reached check out – so much for this months shopping ban)

I went to Marks and Spencer’s today and bought myself a few ‘essentials’. Now I am sure we all know M and S is a little enormous in it’s sizing so I downsized from my normal twelve to a ten. When I tried my first top it was like trying to fight your way out of a parachute. Enormous. I then had the task of trying to gain the attention of an assistant whilst half clad, managing to give a seventy year old in the food hall a coronary as he inadvertently got a glimpse of my cellulited form.

‘Can you get me an eight please?’ I asked ‘These sem to be coming up very big'. You’ve got to love ‘flattery sizing’.

‘But madam is very slim’ she replied. ‘Madam’? Had I accidentally dropped into the set of Grace Brothers? That’s Surrey for you. And slim? Not a commonly use adjective in our house. However, she duly sourced the size eight. I tugged it over my now sweating brow and it fits as it should. Size eight? Woo hoo! No need to cut that label out then.

But the reality is I am no size eight. I am exactly the same size I was when I was seventeen and I am pretty sure that was a size twelve. I wasn’t deemed large then – but certainly not tiny, curvaceous even. But a distinctly average sized twelve. The reality is I have stayed exactly the same – its just the world around me has changed and so I have gone from being a very average seventeen year old to a thirty eight year old now deemed svelte, compared to today’s average of size sixteen.

Similarly, I have been in business now for eighteen years. My budgeting, financing and expansion has always been cautious, particularly as my primary business has been the sole income for my family. I guess you could say I was risk adverse. I have never borrowed exponentially or been anything other than steady. Steady growth, steady income. Boring even. For this reason I hadn’t been on the ‘tout for business’ radar. Banks were only interested if you owed them millions or indeed had million in deposit, lawyers weren’t interested in odds and sods of work – they wanted the big deals. And for this reason I have been of little interest. Until now.

Since the recession hit, my boring little core business - which is still doing deals, and still functioning in credit - is deemed the bee’s knees. I am not just a courier company I’m a solvent courier company. I have never been so entertained by my bank, so courted by the local business community, so on the radar. The social invites are positively flooding in. My business and its contribution to the local community are suddenly as popular as Noemie Lenoir. Staid, boring companies are now deemed good. And I have done nothing different – I have remained exactly the same – it’s just the world around me has changed

The moral of this story is – sometimes by staying exactly the same, you become exactly what you wanted to be. I’m no Elle McPherson or Alan Sugar (although my physical resemblance to the latter increases daily) but I am doing ok. I have no doubt that the economy will take off, and times and attitudes will change again but for now I might as well just enjoy.