Reasons why Fran needs a personal fashion adviser (and some self-esteem)

Is there anyone else as useless as I am at choosing and buying clothes? In the past week, I have had all these fashion disasters.

1. I bought a pair of linen trousers which fitted perfectly in the changing room, forgetting that after an hour's wear, linen trousers stretch to two sizes bigger, bagging around your bottom as though you'd lost three stone and flapping across your thighs like a tarpaulin in a strong wind. Then, of course, it's too late to take them back to the shop. ('It says these were size 18, Madam, when you bought them. How come they're now big enough to camp a family in?')

2. Conversely, I bought a pair of black trousers for work, which seemed fine in the changing room, early in the morning on a breakfast of yogurt and fruit. However, the next day, after porridge for breakfast, a lunch at work of ham sandwiches and someone's birthday cake, a few Party Rings someone left on a desk, and five mugs of restorative teacher-tea, I walked home feeling as though I'd been shrink-wrapped ready for the freezer. All I could think was: is there anyone walking behind me, and will they be wondering if at any minute I'll burst out of these trousers like a Cumberland sausage on a too-high heat?

3. I bought a dress. I thought perhaps it was time for a style change from my usual uniform of black trousers and variously-striped-and-patterned cardigans. With a pair of black tights, I mused, examining myself in the changing room mirror, perhaps I'd get away with it, despite not having worn a dress since my son's wedding in 2008. Then I got home and put it on and twirled this way and that in front of my bedroom mirror. Let's just say, I've never felt more as though I was a woman who's really a man in drag as a woman. What didn't help was that the only pair of black tights I owned were some I wore as an infant in 1964 which I found stuffed in a drawer and, as I pulled them on, fourteen ladders appeared, running down my legs like zips out of control. The tights went in the bin. The dress is going back to the shop. And I won't be going to the pantomime this year in case I haven't yet achieved closure and the Dame brings it all back.

Fran's pupils found it hard to concentrate on the punctuation lesson she was delivering. 

I have had one success. I went into the charity shop and found a pair of blue summer trousers for £3.99. They are also linen and despite being ironed get as creased as Gordon Ramsay's forehead after thirty seconds of wearing unless I stand still and do nothing. But they fit, not being too baggy, or too tight, or too similar to sex-change clothing. 

And they'll get good wear, nothing else in the wardrobe being suitable for public view.