Sunday Scribblings --- My Shoes

I have problem feet. They have spread and stretched and developed unpleasant conditions (requiring morning and evening anointing) over the past few years. I can wear high heels, but I just can't walk very far (as in to the next room) in them. So my shoes are of necessity flat, broad and often very unattractive. I do what I can. I buy in red or purple if those colours are available. My everyday shoes in recent times are pink. They're beginning to look a little the worse for wear, but they have the shape of me in them, so I keep putting them on - one more time, for old time's sake, and promising myself to retire them tomorrow. But I have decided when I go off on my trip next week, they're not coming. They can stay home and mind the house, sit under my kitchen rocker in the place where they always wait for me, and when I return, maybe they'll become my yard shoes - the shoes I have handy to slip my feet into when it's raining, I need to go to the bins, or rush to the washing-line, and I'm in slippers.

This weekend, I bought two new pairs of shoes. On the left, the gold-ish flatties will probably be known as my Cinderella shoes. They took me to my first formal ball on Friday night! I know - 48 years old, and only now venturing into the grown-up world! I woke on Friday morning, thinking it would take a fairy Godmother to make me feel like going to that ball. I had a task to perform that day that wasn't pleasant, and I thought I would just want to go home and hide in my bed after it. I signed the final papers for my separation agreement before lunch on Friday. But the Godmother must have been hovering, because instead of heading home, I found myself shopping. I bought an absolutely kick-ass outfit and those shoes, and I went to the ball, and I enjoyed myself, and I danced, I danced, I danced. Cinderella! But I didn't rush home by midnight. And there was no Prince. But that was the whole point! Who needs a prince? I had my friends, and music, and I felt good, good, good, in my shiny little shoes. And next morning - I still had both shoes, so they will live to dance another day, I suspect!

On the right, the first white shoes I've bought since my wedding shoes! I've just realised that. Well, these are to accompany me when I set off on my California/Oregon oddyssey next week. There has to be something new in the suitcase, so there will be green trousers and these shoes (and probably a few other items acquired along the way). I've never been across the Atlantic. This is hugely exciting for me, and I will be glad to be treading that land in comfy shoes. Yes, I'll bring more shoes ( Last year, on a 4-day trip to Barcelona, I carried 6 pairs of footwear!). I will have flip-flops. I will have runners. Maybe walking-boots? And I will have a pair of little gold sandals that look like just a few threads across my feet, and feel great and make me forget that I have problem feet. Because, problem feet or not, in the right shoes, they can take me anywhere, and if they look a bit odd at times, or call out for a bit of attention, they deserve it. Those feet, those shoes.

So watch out! Here I come! In my travellin' shoes.



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