The guilty party?

What is it about women and guilt? Why are we women going through life burdening ourselves with guilt and feeling we're not really getting anything right or doing anything well enough?

I've heard several of my friends recently say how they feel guilty all the time - guilty for not spending more time with their kids because they're at work; guilty for not working more hours or not working at all and feeling they're not contributing to the family coffers; guilty that they're reading 50 Shades of Grey rather than something cultured and mind improving; guilty they're often too knackered for sex, guilty that they're not getting to that exercise class.... and on it goes.

One even admitted that she feels guilty if she sits and has a cuppa and reads a magazine because 'there's always something around the house that needs doing but instead I'm sitting on my bum'.

Another said with a rueful laugh, 'we women are just born guilty, it comes with the territory.' Woah, stop right there. Where is all this guilt coming from and why do we women seem to be putting ourselves through it?

Most of us are doing the best we can, juggling busy lives, kids, work, money. Pack guilt on top of that and you're heading for a stressed out woman. Guilt is negative and who needs negativity in their life?

I realised I have my own guilt, mine centres on money, spending too much, being too indulgent, having expensive taste, not contributing financially as much as I could if I worked full time in an office instead of being lucky enough to be setting up my own business and doing something I love.

So what I'd like to know is why is it that men don't seem to suffer from guilt the way we do? The menfolk in my house have shown not one iota of guilt at commandeering the TV sets and sitting night after night in front of another bloody Euro 2012 football match. All normal life grinds to a halt as soon as that whistle blows. It's now got to the stage where I can walk into the sitting room, speak to them and they don't even hear me or notice I'm there, so absorbed are they.

Now if I announced that I would be hogging a sofa for hours on end, several nights in a row for almost a month watching interior design programmes, well, I'd never hear the end of it.

So I'm taking myself off to the South of France next week to shop, sit by the sea, eat, swim, sunbathe - and do I feel guilty? Not a bloody chance.

Say it how it is.

Another summer, another diet. This year though I'm not alone. It seems a lot of my friends are now battling the middle aged bulge and are finding their bodies just aren't playing ball as easily as they used to. The pounds go on so blooming easily but are a swine to come off.

Weight sticks relentlessly to the bits we'd really rather it didn't, the days of springing out of bed are long gone as the joints creak and grumble, everything seems that bit more of an effort. If that weren't enough, we've got the menopause just around the corner to look forward to as well, oh joy.

Which is why it's more important than ever to be able to laugh at this inevitable ageing process, to see the funny side of the stiff knees, squidgy tummies and fine lines. This is where kids, with all their straightforwardness, come in handy, they don't let you take yourself too seriously, they say it how it is.

One of my girlfriends decided she'd had enough of the weight slowly but surely going on, she was fed up with her clothes not fitting, of feeling lumpy and bumpy. The time had come to do something about it, the day had come to join a slimming club.

Now anyone who has ever gone down the slimming club route will know that while it definitely works, it's joyless and humiliating. There is little worse than that moment of stepping on the scales for the first time in front of a lithe, energetic instructor and seeing what you've been denying but can't avoid any longer - that you're not 'just a few pounds over 10 stone' and haven't been for a very long time.

My friend took her 14-year-old daughter along for moral support to her first 'fat club' class. She filled out the forms, listened to the nutrition pep talk, jumped around in the exercise class and then came the ghastly moment, she stepped on the scales, with her daughter joining her for the weigh in and peering over her shoulder.

There was a sharp intake of breath from them both then a long silence as they took in the figure on the digital scales.

Well mum', piped up her daughter chirpily, 'it's a good thing you've got dad.'

'Why's that?', asked my friend.

'Because you've no chance of getting another man weighing that much,' came the reply.