I don't need to breathe.

A few weeks ago I went out and got myself Control Pants. To be honest I did not even set out to get myself the pants. It was in a charity store still in its original package. For 50p. Because I am not even dedicated enough to go and get the pants at its original price which might have been £20. In a minute I will try and explain why the pants might have ended up in the charity store.

Control Pants, as in Underwear to those of us in UK, not shorts for those of you outside. Hint: Yanks. At this point of time when we are getting Siberian winds and I have mates posting about moving their clocks forward for Spring, I want to be a Yank. Let them English twats talk shit about me. I am a Yank and One Direction is made up of musical prodigies instead of a bunch of young, annoying twats.

I digress. My Control Pants are to be worn on the inside and will never see the light of day. It will make its journey after being plastered to my arse straight into the washer and then it will be dried Indoors on top of the bedroom radiator. It will not even be seeing any other toilet other than my own because there is no way I am battling to stick it back on when I am in a foreign place while at the same time worrying about my own mortality. You see, in my own bathroom I know which corners to avoid and how to position myself so that I don't take a wall out and end up in the living room covered in rubble with pants halfway up my thighs.

When I first took the pants out of package I laughed. It was a weird laugh. Bordering on physical and psychological anguish kind of laugh. It looked like bicycle shorts for 6 year old girls. No wonder it went straight to Goodwill. If I were to stick that in the bin for things that will be given away it will be for Illwill. I couldn't even bring myself to look at that thing outside the package so let's see some tight, insecure, fat fucker try and squeeze into it.

If you were going to tell me that I just need to watch my diet and do some exercises, you can kill yourself. I am fucking lazy and that is why I subject myself to such torture.

A tip for those who secretly owns such a pair of pants. Don't stick in on after a bath or a shower. It is like Velcro on damp skin. If it slides on easily without you breaking out in sweat and hives, it is too big and it will do fuck all.

I will come clean now and say it was not good luck that the pants were in my size. It was not. I am a size 16 and the pants were a size 8. My thighs were bigger than the waistband. But this is like I said, Lycra. 

I made it happen. I plastered in on. I am now wearing pre-pregnancy size jeans. It doesn't matter that I cannot breathe. I don't need to. I just need to suck it in and smile. As I scrub the bathroom floors. In my new jeans. Because I don't go out much. Which is a good thing really because all that squeezing of internal organs makes me want to pee a lot and since I am on the bathroom floor, scrubbing, I just have to get up, pee and re-battle to pull the fucking pants back up.

Fancy Tickler hasn't noticed. I asked. He said No, you don't look any slimmer. Because he is an honest bloke with a death wish like that. 

Bloody Control Tops.

Control tops are meant for out of control upper torsos belonging to women who either can't be bothered to work out to tighten said torso and/or can't afford the lunchtime liposuction. But maybe that's just me. After years of yo-yo diets and running away from corsets even if just for a minute to properly breathe, it seems like my body has well and truly told me to fuck right off or stick to one fucking plan and get on with it. Just for now, I'll delude myself into thinking that I will take up Pilates One Day. Take up, as though it is something as simple as picking a piece of fluff off your jacket. It won't happen. Unless Pilates is a sure-fire way to survive in a zombie apocalypse and even then I don't see how doing The Plank would deter a rabid undead. The Plank, the exercise routine and not Planking, the favoured hobby for twats the whole world over. Planking that resulted in the death of a bloke who fell off the balcony of an apartment and well... Died. Planking, that I had to endure in the living room of Jaz's mom when his elder sister decided to introduce me to. Planking, that is actually, well... Mind-numbingly stupid. I hope plonking plankers get mauled by Zombies. Look, there he is, planking in between two benches in the park! OmnomnomnomnomOHNOMYINTESTINES!Omnomnomnom.

Control tops. Yes. Almost always made out of some insane percentage of Lycra that if you were to pull it away from your face and promptly release it, it will result in you needing a face reconstruction operation.

The thing with fats is that it will be distributed to wherever the fuck it wants to and it will always be the most obscure place to be padded with fats. Like that area on your back right around your armpits. I have stared at it via a mirror and wondered, exactly why on earth are we built like this? What is the purpose of fats? To keep us warm? Is that area more susceptible to freezing to death? What the fuck? They are like Freelance Donation Collecting People that could be found in front of a Goth Tavern at 4 in the morning. Something that would make you say, What the FUCK are you doing here?! YOU are trying to ask Goths who are monged off their face on pills to donate to UNICEF?

I have never tried Spanx. I have yet the disposable income to buy something worth that much when I can get something exactly the same in Primark which costed me £5. No, I'm too tight-arsed. We got in Primark at quarter to five and it shuts at 6. Are all shops and malls this disgusting in Europe? I come from Singapore and our malls shut at TEN and sometimes even ELEVEN and on Christmas Eve, TWO IN THE MORNING. Fucking lazy bastards. And you're complaining about the nations  lack of spending power to boost the economy. Well, EXTEND SHOPPING HOURS THEN! Then, more blokes will wonder when on earth did he go to La Senza at 9pm and bought 4 sets of knickers on his card. Or maybe in Jaz's case, when on earth did he go to WHSmith to buy 6 bloody books around that time his Ella said 'She's only popping down to the big TESCO to get more fruits'.

So then, I quickly grabbed some control top to replace my Old Faithful One and paid for it and in that time, it was noticed by both of us that it looked fairly small. It's LYCRA, I said. They are deceitful wankers. Kind of like women. You chose them because they looked shiny, tight and compact and very appealing and then you brought them home and realized that they are impossible little, most un-giving difficult shits that slap you in the face when you pull them too far, too fast. Give them a few more goes, they will slip and slide around you and give you support, minus for the few times they roll up and reveal your unsightly flaws during family functions. You have to pat them down and smooth them when they act up even when you have to break a few sweat here and there trying to manoeuvre them.

It was only when I got home and took it out of the bag on the bed to Ooh and Aah over new purchases like women are wont to do that I re-considered that Shit, Maybe It Is Fucking Small. For a control top that is approximately the size of my hand from my wrist to my fingertips, that IS looking painfully painful.

Are you going to try it on? Asked Jaz. I looked up, contemplated and nodded. 'I need you to get out while I try this on.' Why, he asked.

'Love of my life', I began, 'You may have seen all my stretch-marks, you may have been scarred for life when you wake up to see me snoring and slobbering all over your armpit, you may have seen the many faces of my secret bits from delirious to see your secret to dilating because of what your secret bits have implanted in me, but you will never see me in that emotional, heart-wrenching state when I am trying to squeeze my out of control body into a Control Top. Just get ready to call the Ambulance if I crash and bash against something sharp in the process where my face was smothered by LYCRA.'

Of course, he fucked off and made himself coffee, hung out with Josh and had a fag, not at all waiting outside the bedroom door anxious that I might endanger my person.

I moaned, grunted, wailed, bashed my scabbing, recovering, bruised knee against the window sill that was built so low it should never been approved by Health and Safety, and fucked up two hours worth of make-up and hair-straightening. Twanged, slapped and sprained myself. And the fucking straps was one of those that you can slip out of the loop to fashion it to maybe a strapless, cross or racer-backed tops. One of the bloody strap had un-did itself while I was wrestling it, twanged and shot me in the eye.

Resurfaced, tied my hair back in a ponytail and smoothed runny mascara and sat on the bed waiting for Jaz to come back in and say something like OH WOW A GREEK GODDESS or whatever.

He came back down and said 'Oh you decided not to try it then?'

WHAT?! WHAT! WHAAAAAAAAT!