1 DECEMBER 2001, Page 52

Ungirdled

My friend used to make me laugh when she said there was nothing so gross, so slug-like, so fatty or foul, so deserving of loathing and dread, as the female paunch. Instead, we admired our flat-bellied perfection.

Now, as we sip sweet tea in the raking light of an English autumn afternoon (while our children dash, bare-foot in the grass) our own paunches seem, rather, like charming testimonies to maternal love, best viewed from above, and with affection.

Jenny Swann