This entry is prompt #3 of The Book of Me, Written by You project.

The prompt for week 3 is:

Describe your physical self.

Your size – clothes size

Scars

Eye colour

Draw your hands

Finger Prints

OK let's start with the basics. I am 5'6″ and a “larger lady” – a size 18-20, classic pear shape with big boobs, a (slightly) narrower waist and big tummy/hips/bum. It's not a shape or size I particularly like. When I was a child I was a bit of a barrel, as wide at the bottom and top as in the middle but I slimmed off as I got older and just before I fell pregnant with my daughter I was a size 10 on top, 12 on the bottom and pretty happy with that. Pregnancy number 1 saw me going up to a size 14 all over; pregnancy number 2 and the post-natal depression that followed saw me balloon and my on-off relationship with smoking has also played its part in my size. I do keep trying to lose weight but I tend to lose half a stone and gain ten pounds … One day…

Anyway, on with the rest of me – from top to bottom.

My hair is fine and straight and naturally mid-brown with a slight auburn tint to it, though I tend to dye it – at the moment it's a rather lovely shade called 'Morello Cherry'. Till I was forty I didn't have a single grey hair but they're making an unwelcome appearance now – my daughter pulled out about a dozen thick silver stands a couple of weeks ago, hence the dying! At present my hair is cut in a shortish bob style, with a fringe. In fact, my hair's pretty much always like this and never much longer than shoulder length, though in my teens I did dabble with spikes and a flat top.

My ears are small and neat and don't stick out too much, and I have what I call “proper” ear lobes. They're pierced once, though I don't often wear earrings. Behind my right ear is a large, bulbous mole; I have a similar one on my head, just under the hairline.

My eyes – well, they used to be green with yellow flecks, but nowadays they seem to hover somewhere between green and blue according to my mood, health and the colours I'm wearing. I wear glasses or contact lenses, depending on whether I'm at home or going out. My eyelashes – or lack of them – are probably the most disappointing part of my appearance. My top lashes are sparse and short and my lower ones are non-existent. Bah. My nose is small and somewhat pointy, my top lip is thinner than I'd like and my mouth tends to turn down at the corners, even when I'm smiling. I have to make a real effort to pull a cheesy grin! I have a bit of a double chin and my neck is wrinkly and looks considerably older than the rest of my face, which is aging well – a sign that I didn't moisturise my neck in my youth!

My arms are probably the slimmest part of my body, and somewhat tanned at present. I like my hands; I have long fingers – “piano player's fingers”, my grandad said when I was born – and my nails are also long and slender and a nice shape, though I do tend to bite them when they get too long. One of my fingers on my right hand has a bit of a nobble on the knuckle where I dropped a TV on it during a house move. Also on my right hand – well, actually on the inside of my wrist – is a tattoo. In fact it's two separate tattoos, one of a heart-shaped phoenix that I got last year, and the other a small red rose I have just had added this week. It's still a bit scabby at the moment, but I love it.

My body is best not talked about too much – pale and flabby in all the wrong places. I have an “inny” belly button though it's tricky to spot within the flab!

My thighs are chunky and my knees are odd. Quite literally. One knee is about average size and shape, but the other is riddled with arthritis and swollen on a permanent basis. I also have a big scar across it – but more about scars shortly.

Move down my calves – chunky again – and past my ankles and we reach my feet. Once my best feature, my left foot has a very peculiar look about it now. A few years ago I developed a Morton's Neuroma between two toes and had a couple of cortisone injections to “cure” it. Unfortunately the jabs actually did more harm than good as they destroyed the protective sheath between my toe bones and one of my toes has now decided to fly off to the right, leaving my foot looking quite deformed. It makes walking uncomfortable at times and while it can be corrected with some heavy duty surgery, that's something for the future (and when I've lost some weight!). My other foot is still slender and graceful, with long straight toes (excet for the little one, which has always been a bit curly).

So those scars – I have a fair few scars dotted around my body, and every one has a story to tell. The large scar on my knee is the result of surgery to correct a tendon poblem when I was a teenager. When I first saw it I cried and said “No one will ever love me now!” but of course that hasn't proved to be the case. Also on my knee are two small dots where the drain and microscope went in during surgery, and both my knees have light scars from a nasty fall onto gravel when I was a child. On my forehead I have a small indentation where my son, in an ADHD rage, hit me with a metal tin and cut me; under my lip there's a thin line where I bit through my lip when I fell down a step when I was three; and under my chin there's a very faint scar from when I fainted in drama class and hit my head on a music stand. (I also wet mysef …. utterly humiliating at the time!)

Over the years I've had numerous burn marks on my arms from not taking enough care with the oven, but they have all faded away now. I broke my right arm when I was a child and at the base of my right thumb there's a mark where my skin was nicked with the giant scissors when the plaster cast was removed. One of my knuckles bears the marks of a close encounter with a concrete lamp post that I grazed past on my bike when I really should have been cycling in the other direction for dinner. And on my little finger there's a line where I cut my finger badly on a flint rock whilst swimming in the sea at Cromer. I should also have a scar from trigger thumb surgery I had when I was three but the doctor very cleverly cut along my natural palm line so there's no mark.

And that's about it – oh, apart from my birth mark. It's a white, irregular blob on the top of my inner thigh and unless I have a sun tan it's invisible – so I haven't seen it for a very long time!