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.