If you're not wearing invisible socks at the gym then you're doing it wrong.

It was an awakening equivalent to the moment I discovered I was pronouncing memes incorrectly (note: it is not memehz).

Look down at anyone wearing trainers – and everyone is wearing them now – you cannot see their socks. Their socks must be tiny, neat, cotton spiderwebs on people’s feet. Oh, the delicateness of them.

It’s clear there are right socks to wear and wrong socks.

I know this because I regularly turn up to the gym in wrong socks. I don’t think I have worn a matching pair of socks since 1986. I’ve bought a lot of socks over the years. I could make Donald Trump’s Mexico wall with the number of socks I’ve bought, but I have two children with the same size feet as me and one youngest child who is so wily she can origami fold an adult sock and make it fit an 11-year-old’s foot.

"I haven't worn a matching pair of socks since 1986." 

Once she went to school on a day that involved an excursion where the kids were required to hike and "study botanica". Arriving at school she realised she only had one sock (how she got to school with just one sock is another of life's mysteries) so she made another sock out of toilet paper.

WE NEVER HAVE MATCHING SOCKS. Or WE HAVE NO SOCKS AT ALL (which is so strange considering if I was to conjure a visual image of my home in my head right now I can see individual socks under couches and in corners of bedrooms and at the bottom of wardrobes).

So often I end up in my husband's socks. Did I mention he has size 15 feet? People have stood at our front door and looked at his hastily thrown off runners in what my family loosely calls the "shoe basket" (general repository at front door for life shit no-one wants. I once found a tin of cat food in there and we don't own a cat) and these "friends" of mine have laughed at the size of his shoes. They are giant shoes and do look very stupid unless feet are in them and even then it's 50/50 as to whether actual use mitigates their stupidity.

So there I am at the gym. Next to gorgeous, young, motivated people with clean cars and you CANNOT SEE THEIR SOCKS. But I know they are there. Every now and then I see the teensy weensy tip of MATCHING socks. I can't help but admire everyone's ankles.

Scroll through to see all these people with their imaginary socks. (Post continues after gallery.)

The magic of invisible socks.

And I am wearing men's extra large socks that you sometimes have to buy from special shops.  There is no doubt you can see mine. The heel part flaps out the back of my shoe and the ankle rises so far up they are Roger Federer tennis length. Sometimes I try to fold them over, but that is a fool's paradise because one of the requirements of a gym is movement.

I'm on a circuit, constantly displaying my socks to the neat, matching sock people (who I am sure are in some kind of gang that sells drugs just like the bikies only this gang ride three speed green bicycles and have tattoos with much better symmetry) and the fold I made just flips itself back into its natural resting spot. Anyway, a bulbous fold can look worse than a long sock.

I can't just buy more socks of the invisible variety to solve this issue. They go MIA. I'm on a sock buying go-slow.

The only socks in the house I can rely on are for size 15 feet and sit next to reliable men's undies in a top drawer my girls stopped looking in years ago.

I will keep wearing them. My feet will look like the equivalent of a those sensible brown velcro sandals I've seen some older men wear for, what I presume, are comfort reasons.

I will keep squashing my socks down as I'm pretending to do my warm up stretches. I will keep believing socks you can actually see will make a comeback.

Fashion is all about evolution.