Horse Shoes

I am going to a birthday celebration next weekend. It’s a dinner in a smart hotel, and I need to scrub up a bit for it. I have a rather glitzy dress which hasn’t seen the light of day for about a year, and which offers the perfect blend of sleek sophistication (for when I arrive) and party animal (for when I leave). The problem is that the shoes I bought to go with the dress have been reduced to twisted, mummified corpses at the bottom of the wardrobe. I am going to have to find a replacement pair, and that means going shoe shopping this weekend.
Now, I love going shopping for clothes, especially if it follows a boozy lunch with a good friend, and involves swaying in and out of dinky boutiques, stifling giggles and daring each other to try on totally unsuitable stuff (tops that reveal upper arms, peasant-style dresses, anything lime green).
But no amount of alcohol can numb the despair and humiliation of shoe shopping. I often feel like I belong to a completely different species when it comes to the topic of shoes. Many of my friends get a bigger sexual thrill from ogling shoes than they do from ogling their husbands (but then looking at some of the husbands, it’s hardly surprising). Shoes have become a byword for wild-eyed womanly lust. Buying shoes apparently represents the orgasmic fusion of female desire, submission and subsequent guilt.
I read once that the reason women supposedly lust after fancy footwear is because shoes are an accessible piece of glamour for all women, regardless of their body size. So, no matter how large you might be, or how much weight you put on, shoes will always fit.
Well, I’m sorry, but that is a load of sh....oes. I am the unhappy owner of wide feet. When I was pregnant they were even wider. So wide that flip-flops seemed like a reasonable option in February.
Years of sitting in shoe shops trying to cram my robot feet into tiny strips of satin or leather have left me feeling like one of Cinderella’s ugly sisters. I might be able to go to the ball, but if I want to dance or do anything other than sit on a stool and annoy the bar staff, I will be forced to wear sensible shoes.
Shoe manufacturers seem to be convinced that anyone with wide feet must be over seventy and devoted to beige. I never knew there were so many shades of beige, but wide-fitting shoes encompass the whole beige spectrum. They can range from a delicate, pale ‘support stocking’, through to ‘corn plaster’, and all the way to a rich, dark ‘ear wax’. The excitement of buying a foxy, sparkly red dress diminishes rather rapidly when the options for accompanying footwear all involve neutral colours, comfortable one inch heels, and large buckles for easy fastening. Not exactly ‘f**k-me’ shoes – more ‘sit me down with a nice cup of tea’ shoes.
Before I decide to unleash my inner pensioner, I am going to unleash this Friday’s Drunk Mummy Cheap Fizz. It’s an Australian sparkling wine made from Chardonnay and Pinot Noir, and was chosen purely on the basis of its cork – or its lack of cork.
I am a huge fan of the screw-top wine bottle, since the disappointment of a bitter-tasting corked wine is enough to reduce me to tears. This Deakin Estate Brut (Oddbins £6.99) has a cap like a beer bottle, and why not? It is impossible to force a cork back into a bottle of sparkly stuff (and who would want to anyway?), so the metal cap seems like a perfectly sensible idea.
Admittedly if you tried to ‘pop’ the top off in true party buffoon style, you might get severe lacerations to the eye, but then I have always thought such displays of forced exuberance to be a complete waste of good fizz. The celebrations at the end of a Grand Prix race usually have me tutting like a tight-lipped maiden aunt.
The idea of forcing a cork back into a bottle is an uncomfortable reminder of the hellish task that lies ahead of me tomorrow. I think I need another glass of this rough-and-ready Aussie fizz to cope with the prospect. It is quite yeasty, and creamy, but with a good crisp finish - just what I need!
I have noticed that some shops are starting to do ranges of shoes to fit wider feet, so I know that I am not alone in my splay-footed splendour. These collections are usually called something euphemistic like ‘comfort range,’ ‘eezee-fit’ or ‘heifer hooves’ but at least they do colours other than beige, so maybe there is a chance I might buy a gorgeous and vertiginous pair of heels to go with my party dress. On the other hand, perhaps I should just stick with flip-flops, and then I won’t have to worry about falling over at the end of the evening.

Long Tall Sally

There were two very tall girls in my class at school. They were always on the back row of the school photos, slightly round-shouldered and stooping, as if to try and apologise for the extra space they were taking up in the world. When we all got to our early teens, and boys became a huge feature in our lives, their height became even more of a problem, despite the fact that they were both pretty. Most males in their early teens still look like little boys, albeit a bit spotty, but the tall girls looked like fully grown women.

No teenage boy wants to look like he is slow-dancing with his mother, so at the school discos the tall girls never experienced the thrill of the ‘last dance’ gropefest. For them, there was no opportunity to inhale at close quarters the hormone riddled essence of pubescent boy. They were strangers to the sound of grinding tooth enamel resonating through the skull, and the feel of an alien tongue writhing like a fat maggot in the mouth.

I often think about the tall girls, and wonder if they made up for lost time when they were in their twenties, and all the boys had finally caught up in height with them. Maybe they eventually got to wear the slinky high heels we all coveted, instead of being confined to the calf-widening effect of flatties. Did they recover from being marked out at such a young age? Did they go on to revel in their physical superiority?

I suppose I also think about the tall girls because I see my daughter developing into one right before my eyes. Currently she sees her height as a source of pride, as it gives her a big advantage at sport, but I worry for her teenage years, when the boys who are her age will be about the same height as her navel.

It is hard to find tall female role models that are not anorexic clothes horses, but I think we have found the answer. Since netball is her current passion, we are off to a Super League match this weekend. Forget the school netball days of sweaty airtex and corned beef legs, these women are lycra-clad goddesses, all young, lean limbed and athletic. Here the amazon is queen - I don’t think there is a player under five foot ten.

They sometimes televise these matches on Sky Sports, so you may see us in the crowd (I am the one with the hip flask).

Tonight, though, I am getting stuck into a Hardy’s Crest Sparkling Pinot Noir Chardonnay (was £9.99, down to £4.99 at Tesco until 15/5 – you really can’t go wrong) as recommended by my mate Dulwich Mum. Like her, it is smooth, classy, and a little bit fruity. Unlike her, it is cheap, easily available, and has a hint of yeast.

I suppose from my daughter’s point of view, there will be some huge advantages to being tall. She will probably look old enough to get into clubs when she is fourteen, get served with alcopops when she is fifteen, and snog fully grown men when she is sixteen. Maybe I need to go easy on the confidence boosting talk about her height.

Have a great Bank Holiday weekend!