After the good bits of yesterday's excursion came the low point, in the form of a visit to Marks and Spencer to buy a bra.It was a dismal experience. Chaps, be very grateful, you don't know what you're missing.
I don't like bras, on the whole, and most of the time manage very happily in cotton camisoles. Bras were one of those necessary but tedious things, like court shoes, that I largely parted company with when I gave up office life and became an outdoor creature. There are few things more revolting and uncomfortable than spending an energetic day digging, bending, and lifting with a sweat-soaked elasticated band clinging to your ribs, and nasty synthetic straps rubbing over your shoulders. If I were to take up sport I would buy a proper sports bra, but since that isn't very likely to happen any time soon, the world of bras and I remain largely estranged.
However, I didn't think that a cotton camisole would cut the mustard for the wedding. For that I thought I should have a proper foundation garment, to go with the rest of the outfit, even though the likelihood of me dragging the Systems Administrator on to the dance floor is about as great as that of my taking up sport. I used to have a very nice, rather expensive, plain black, moderately see-through one that did for such occasions, only I have lost it. Goodness knows how you lose a bra, but it managed to disappear somewhere on the trip to Devon. I couldn't find it after we got home, and searched my suitcase, and the laundry basket, but it was nowhere to be found, so I presume it dropped down behind the furniture in the hotel room after undressing, and we failed to find it in our final sweep of the room when we were leaving. I'm surprised by that, since we are pretty meticulous about checking round after we've packed, and don't normally forget things. However, unless the B&B owner was a fetishist who nicked undies from guests' rooms while they were having their breakfast, which seems highly unlikely, then I must have left it behind.
The underwear department of the Marble Arch department of Marks and Spencer is full of bras whose use and purpose I cannot fathom. My idea of good underwear is that it should be invisible under my clothing while making me look a nice shape. No lumps, no bumps, no strange wrinkles where my underclothing obtrudes through my outer garments. Perhaps brightly coloured straps, to add a touch of frivolity if one's top slips to one side. Marks and Spencer's lingerie department is full of rack upon row of ruched, ruffled, sequin-encrusted, lacy, lumpy, embroidered, bedecked and be-feathered bras. Bras made out of material so thick and textured it must surely have been designed as upholstery fabric. Bras that seem to be prototype examples of 3-D printing. I can't imagine any shirt, sweater or dress sitting happily over them, let alone a sea-island cotton turtleneck and a shift dress in ultra-fine viscose, which is what I'm wearing tomorrow.
The average UK bosom is a size D nowadays, apparently, and there are acres of support for the larger lady. I could ignore those, so the choice was beginning to narrow down. I thought I'd give the push-up section a miss as well. I'm very happy to have been born after the era of the corset, and should like to be vaguely comfortable for our friends' wedding. T-shirt bras sounded like what I was looking for. I picked out a likely plain black candidate in all the combinations of cup and chest sizes that sounded remotely plausible, and went to try them on.
The underwear changing rooms in M&S are really depressing. You get your own cubicle, which is something, and it is surrounded by mirrors so that you can see exactly how awful you look from every angle. In a bid to reduce the store's carbon footprint the ambient lighting is dim, giving the initial impression that you might have wandered with your shopping into a cupboard. Then a strip light comes on, presumably when a sensor detects movement in the cubicle. This emits a strange, yellow light, possibly the most unflattering colour ever devised for viewing human skin. Mine, sallow at the best of times, appeared a deep, jaundiced yellow with greenish overtones, while the stress of trying on all those elastic straps brought out random pink splotches. I looked like something out of a Lucien Freud painting, but without the quality of brushwork.
None of the bras fitted. I didn't fill the cups of any of them, as even the B cup wrinkled loosely over my breasts, producing a peculiar, shelf-like effect. I am quite slim, and fairly well-toned as middle aged ladies (the core M&S lingerie customer) go, and the 34 inch bra dug into the flesh under my arms producing ugly rolls of flesh that aren't there with the cotton camisoles. The 36 inch size did exactly the same thing, while simultaneously riding up across the back, a classic sign that a bra is too big. That bra might have looked OK on somebody whose BMI was so low they were borderline medically underweight, or else someone as finely honed as Jessica Ennis, but I couldn't see who else it was going to be any good to.
I was very tempted to give up. I looked at some cotton T-shirt bras that (joy of joys) were not underwired, but they came in packs of two and there were none left in bearable colours in the 34-36, B-C range that I thought I must inhabit. Eventually I found another two-pack in an OK-ish design, went through the horrible rigmarole of trying them on, and discovered that, as far as I could tell, I was still a 36B, which is what I have believed myself to be for the past twenty years. Nobody was free to give me a proper fitting. I knew that because the woman ahead of me in the queue for the nasty cubicles asked, and they couldn't offer her an appointment until the next day.
M&S still sells a quarter of all ladies' underwear sold in the UK. That comes to 45 bras a minute. They remain the market leader, even though their market share is not what it was. Apparently they have been trying to appeal to younger and more fashionable customers who want their bras to show as part of their outfits (silly girls), while not alienating their core customer base. Meanwhile, I am going to start saving for my underwear escape fund, so that next time I need a bra I can go to Rigby and Peller.
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