Feelin’ hot, hot, hot…

In summer 2019 I had a deep need to dress up and take a bunch of new photos for the first time in far too long. The trouble is, a lot of my older clothes were falling to bits. The four-inch-heeled boots a friend had passed on to me were crumbling away (I think they were old enough to vote by that point…) and I had to get new versions of old outfits.

My attempt at updating my wardrobe ended up looking more like a trip to Torture Garden than being a secret agent…

Those crumbling boots were bloody awkward and I only ever wore them with my old fancy dress catsuit. Time to get new boots! The boots I ended up getting were gloriously cheap PVC with more manageable three inch heels. Trouble is, they were incredibly shiny and didn’t fit the catsuit. So I then got a gloriously cheap PVC catsuit to match them. The end result was like a happy, shiny version of Black Widow.

Nothing phallic about that tank at all. No, sirree.

My search for locations I hadn’t used before took me to the former mining town of Prestonpans where the Prestongrange outdoor museum contains the rusting relics of Scotland’s industrial past. The last time I’d been there it was barren and muddy and looked like the sort of ruins where Wonder Woman fought World War One. It had become quite overgrown and lush in the meantime, as nature slowly reclaimed the area. Some exhibits were so fragile they’d been fenced off, limiting the opportunity for atmospheric photos with a hint of danger to them.

*Heroic music swells* *like my chest*

Fortunately one of my friends is an accomplished photographer, and was able to find good props and figure out the best angles for epic photos. It didn’t matter that it was a fantastically sunny day instead of the usual, moody clouds. We made it work.

It was my first time in far too long wearing something so… attention-grabbing. I’m damn glad I had a photographer with me, or I’d look like some sort of weirdo or pervert with an industrial history fetish. Who else visits the mining museum, you ask? Well: retirees. And elderly dog walkers. I didn’t want them to freak out, so I bade them a cheery ‘good afternoon!’ like nothing was out of the ordinary. Maybe I didn’t speak loudly or clearly enough, because they just stared. Oh well.

Shiny – let’s be bad guys.

The downside of taking photos on the hottest, sunniest day in years, is that it’s not the best weather for wearing PVC. There is no ventilation, and nowhere for all the gallons of sweat to drain away. It looked slick and shiny on the outside, and it felt slick and shiny on the inside. My fake tits went akimbo. The 70% of water that my body usually consists of ended up between my skin and the costume.

But none of that mattered. I’d been watching my diet and exercising more and I finally had a chance to show off. I trusted my photographer to find my best angles. The torrent of sweat that poured out back home when I peeled the damn thing off was worth it!

I was so hungry I started eating my clothes from the other end.

Of course, writing this at the end of 2020 after months of lockdown and comfort eating, I look at these photos and realise I’ve got a bit of an uphill battle to get back into shape. That’s what 2021 will be for!