Shoe fly!

It’s been a hard two week for me. First I fell up the stairs, which was not half as bad as the consequences, to be frank. Yes, I got to stay home for a week, during which I slept a lot and cried some – with exhaustion, frustration, stress, pain and sheer relief that I could stop for a while and try and figure out what I was doing. That was the good part. The bad part was rather more serious, from my point of view. I could not drive – that wonderful new car has been driven by Father, by the driver and by, of course, the chappie who delivered it to us at the showroom. But NOT by me. Well…if I have to be honest, I did drive it from the shop to the temple and back again, but that does not count as real driving, you know. I could not go running around to do all the chores I had set myself for when I had time off, from buying new carpets and curtains to chasing spiders with my trusty arachno-broom, sorting out the lofts, rearranging the linen closet, trying on the most impractical shoes at the store and making cookies that combined the flavours of cheese and chocolate without ruining either (perhaps not, but it sounds interesting)….

Some years ago, I was confined in a cast after surgery. It was rather more fun then, since the fibreglass did the supporting and I could run about as much as was physically possible without fearing any further damage. At the time, the cast had to be changed weekly and I got the most exotic colours, from pale cream to emerald green to bilious yellow to sapphire blue and dashing fuschia pink. In all that I had a mobile fashion statement and, astonishingly, shorts to match. It was a handicap to outdo any. And I could dream happily of a time when I would shed the rigid casing and be able to get back on my sharp heels – albeit after a period of learning how to walk properly again, of course. This time, I am rather irritable about the whole thing. It is not spectacular, not as much so as the time of the cast, but it is painful and, in a way, limiting. I am various colours along one limb, my toe is still somewhat reminiscent of a, over-done cocktail sausage and I feel a lot more self-pitying than I am normally wont to do.

The jeans are back on after two weeks of wearing loose and flappy salwars. They are restrictive and hurt rather, pressing too hard on the bruises that still need TLC, but they are back in the forefront (hehehe) of my style saga. What is going to take longer is the heels. One-inchers today are already making their unsuitability felt. My toe is singing an A-sharp of reproach. My ankle is not very happy with me. And my knee is protesting rather violently at being confined thusly.

No pain, no gain is a phrase my physiotherapist loved to throw at me – if I could have thrown something back at him, I would have with great pleasure, especially if that was something that was hard and could cause very painful damage. It is a mantra in the world of style, where shoes that are beautiful are generally semaphores of great anguish. Nothing showed this off more than a pair of very pretty and funky kitten heels I bought in New York one rainy afternoon. They were Jellies, clear red plastic, peep-holed and pert. They fit beautifully in the shop, tried on when my feet had been walking for a few hours, which is the best time to get a realistic idea of what is a good fit, I had been advised. And I wore them often. But never without suffering untold agonies. They bit where I never imagined shoes to be able to bite. They left deep welts in tender portions of my foot, making it almost impossible to slide into any other kind of footwear without squeaking in various notes in pain for days afterwards. And when they finally had to be confined to that nowhere land where shoes go when you throw them away post-many years of suffering, I did truly miss them, though not the blisters I earned every time I wore them.

Vanity, thy name is me. And even though I wince at every step in these fragile sandals I am wearing right now, I think of how nicely they complement the jeans that I should not yet be wearing.