No, nothing to do with Brazilian butt lifts at all. Nothing to do with the very nice looney TV show Bottom. Nothing to do with addicts finally scraping the barrel bottom and waking up. Nothing to do with getting into the warm winter trousers bought many years ago, mostly velvet, because the air temperature has dropped and corduroy just isn’t helping any more. Nothing to do with getting the last crumbs out of the giant panettone tin, which will occur tomorrow. None of those.
There are, however, plenty of articles about Brazilian butt lifts, in every magazine. There are, apparently, many, many women who wish not only to have a massive fundament, but would like everyone to notice that they can walk around with a tray, a couple of glasses and a bottle of something fizzy balanced upon it. This is contrary to the whole of desirable fashion in my lifetime so far, although, being thoroughly cognisant of fashion in the British Isles for the last thousand years or so, it is merely a repeat of previous centuries. Eighteenth century court dress required collapsible panniers so wearers could negotiate doorways without getting totally stuck, causing starving gentlemen courtiers to have to borrow through the folds to get to the breakfast table. More recently Edwardian bum rolls were detachable and there is written anecdotal evidence that the fashion was quite warm, if inconvenient when attempting to perch on the newly invented omnibus seats.
However, none of these, or previously, fashionable extra girth, width, height or anything else needed the body of the fashionista to change. All the fashionable shapes of history relied on additions to the clothing that would push the more mobile areas of the wearer to prominence, or flatten them, or make cunningly wrought fabric additions to change the silhouette.
The lifting of the derriere, so very now, is achieved by surgical implants, sculpting and similar procedures, which do, over time, succumb to gravity and require repetition to restore the abnormal tray shelf to the required height. This requires repeat expenditure of a large amount, or, as the operators involved classify the liftees, an income.
It has to be very expensive because, despite all the magazine ink and podcast electricity expended upon the procedure, not all that many people can be involved, or Marks and Spencer’s would purvey the knickers for it. Which they do not. I checked. They do have women’s knickers for every other condition the lower half of a woman could find itself in, with high legs, low legs, low rise shorts, full body, half body, thong, lacy thing and some like bits of string but butt lift knickers absolutely absent. I looked very thoroughly because I was after some new ones to replace some I am going to chuck out.
That really is what the bottoming out is about. Not necessarily bottoming out myself, or, even decking out my bottom with new decking.
What I am really bottoming out is drawers, cupboards, wardrobes, boxes, craft rooms, spare rooms and everywhere else that craft stuff, fashion and bits of this and that, purchased in faith, with hope and the prospect of either joy, or, at least five minutes gainfully occupied, in view.
Now that I come to look at it all, joy was an awful lot to hope for. Why did I buy all this stuff? How have I accumulated such vast quantities of things I have not used?
Absolutely acres of it are for card making, which could be described as my hobby, now that dolls housering has been for years and years, my jobby. I have just printed off the calendar for this year, 2026 and added, along the bottom edge, all the occasions, birthdays and so on for which I make a card. 27.
How can the need to make 27 cards in a year fill an entire craft room, the S&H’s former bedroom, quite a lot of the garage and random piles in my bedroom? If I stuck all the 12inch paper pad sheets side by side I could wallpaper Buckingham Palace, easily, with enough left over for the all horses in Horseguard’s Parade to have pretty stables.
I don’t even do 12 inch scrapbooks now that Portraiture has stopped. My holiday sketchbook/scrapbook is four inches square.
And yes, Christmas cards. This year I made and sent 60 cards and received 28 but even that tour de force of two months does not require two rooms and a bedroom floor. I like buying the stuff to do it, I have discovered today a box labelled ‘Christmas’ with enough stuff to do the next three or four. Five if you include the very brilliant one in the cupboard behind me which requires fifty porcelain bits, of which I have managed only about eight so far. That was a good idea about five years ago.
And there is the nub, the kernel, the wellspring and, if you insist, fundamental problem.
I have ideas.
I wake up in the morning with ideas. I go to bed thinking of ideas and, in between, I have ideas.
Not just for card making. For porcelain dolls, for new dolls for new cards, for new joints for new ways of making things work and putting them together. By the Spring I’ll be having new gardening ideas.
Some people, such as the OH, are addicted to their mobile telephones, the problem of which is, that those are other people’s ideas. I don’t have a phone because I don’t have room in my head for other people’s ideas, I already have too many of my own.
While I’m writing this I’m thinking of several other things I could be writing about and will. Thoughts for writing, usually, stay in the brain, which is a lot neater than thoughts for all these other things that fill up rooms.
I did meet a very nice miniaturist once, who was married to a farmer. He had given her a barn of her own. Needless to say she was a very good customer. She had a barn to fill.
If I had appended a barn to the house instead of just building a craft room and two bedrooms on top of the garage, I’d have a barn full of stuff to bottom out.
Would you ever see the bottom of a barn? That might be but one butt too far to lift.
Just in case you were wondering, I am not going to throw anything useable away. Come the miserable third week of January all this lovely, in many cases brand new, and in all cases in prime condition and unused craft stuff, will be going out with the lockdown library for the neighbours to take away and play with and cheer themselves up.
Yes, having filled my spare room I’m now going to fill spare rooms all over the neighbourhood.
Uplifting BUTT, also, bottoming out.
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