A little rant - dress sizes

I have never been fussy about what size clothes I buy, and in fact I often find that buying a bigger size looks better and helps to hide those lumps and bumps.

However after going to a very posh strees market the other day I started thinking. I overheard a conversation on a handmade clothes stall:
Woman "this is nice, its a medicum, what size is that"
Vendor " a medium is a size 10"

Now in what bonkers world is a small ( size 8), a medium( size 10) and a large a (12). Based on that they will have to create a new dress size just for me, maybe it will be entitled elephant or sealion size!

So being a bit obsessional I googled average UK size:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/average-dress-size-of-women-increases-to-14-715277.html

Phew, at a size 14/16 I am in fact average ( on the large side of medium), and not actually a whale.