Belly Ache

Well it has come to that time of year where one has to spend several minutes upon arrival anywhere, divesting oneself of gloves, coats scarves and hats only to have the whole process repeated in reverse before exiting the building again.

Working as I do across quite a number of different sites I find myself having to repeat this little performance multiple times a day in front of various staff teams.

Many of our NHS offices are massively in need of modern heating and the ancient boilers and pipes that we are stuck with heat the offices  up to near blast furnace levels of warmth. This necessitates my having to also remove my jumper more often than not which leads me to a quandary .

Very often my shirt will ‘ride up’ as I remove said jumper, revealing a few inches of pale untoned midriff to all and sundry. I am afterwards forced to swiftly tuck my shirt back into my trousers in what I mentally refer to as ‘the Gasson manoeuvre’.  Sometimes it is possible to untuck the shirt and sit hard upon it prior to removal of the jumper but this is still very uncomfortable.

Now I am quite embarrassed about showing my tummy to work colleagues & so I have taken to a new practice of always changing out of my jumper in the gentleman’s toilet where I can take the precaution of locking the door before I wrestle myself away from the clutches of my jumper. This also affords me the opportunity to quickly check (what remains of) my hair to ensure that the static generated by the removal of the garment has not caused the hair to balloon out like some crazy Einstein.

Although the toilet visit does minimise the embarrassment from crazy hair and belly flashing, it brings with it another problem which is that I become paranoid that people will wonder why I am going to the bathroom and returning with no jumper on. Do people understand my concerns or do that draw the conclusion that I am locking myself in there in order to experiment with different clothing choices like some kind of cut price Mr Benn. Do they visualise me parading up and down in front of the washbasin mirror in different variations of dress and undress. Trousers on my head, shirt fully unbuttoned or whatever outlandish style takes my fancy.

Probably not, but it does mean that I usually try and time my divestment toilet visits to coincide with my frequency of urination in order to allay suspicion.

Roll on the spring.