The weather is unbelievable – so warm and sunny, you’d think you were in some civilised climate and not Canada at all. The heat is scarily inappropriate – ten degrees tomorrow! – but it’s hard to stay disapproving for long. I walked to Yonge Street in the sun today, to buy some new jeans. (Everything I wear is from second-hand stores except underwear, shoes, jeans, and fashionable but cheap stuff from Monoprix, in France. And yes, I know it’s strange to declare myself a frugalista who flies to France to shop at the equivalent of Woolworth’s. Ah well. My right-wing friend Paul has called me a champagne socialist for years. Actually, I’m a Prosecco socialist.)

Anyway, some months ago, still under the influence of sensible French eating, I went jeans-shopping at Gap with my daughter and came home with a pair of size 4 jeans. Even as I paraded about in them, I knew this was absurd – size 4? Who are we kidding? I’m not eating THAT sensibly. Must be a special new kind of sizing to flatter the middle-aged. And though not as low-rise as hers, they were still low enough that I always had to tuck in my stomach when wearing them. Tiresome.

Anyway, I am in full carb-loading-to-survive-winter mode, and the little jeans hurt. As my mother-in-law used to quip, “My shoe size is an 8, but a 10 feels sooo good.” So I went to the Levi’s store on Yonge Street and poured myself into a bigger pair. And what a pair – designed, obviously, for bulging old farts, they’re a deliciously stretchy design called Figure Enhancers. “Perfectly slimming,” says the tag. “Flattens your tummy and slims your shape. Sits at waist.” That’s the important part – SITS AT WAIST. Despite the usual teeny tiny zipper, they rise up to the waist like real pants, not like the silly, shrunken, stick figure suck-in-your-gut muffin-top pants. They hold the belly IN, not force it to dangle over the waist band. All that spandex molds the folds. What a marvel, eh? We boomers now get geriatric Levis.

I think Stephen Harper brought in a budget today. Luckily, I was too busy trying to do up the teeny tiny zipper of my new magic high-rise pants to pay the slightest attention.