Time to toe the line

Are feet sexy? Eve Jones, bemused that passion can emanate from anything podiatric, is relieved that feet can, once more, be safely encased in Le Chameau

Thank God the summer’s over and we can all get back to wearing proper footwear, which hides the trotters that have been slapping about for the past four months.

My new favourite Instagram account, @chinocchicos.chin.dictionary (a vocabulary dedicated to individuals “shaped by years of upper-class inbreeding”), posted “not a sole mate, instantly writing off a blind date based on his or her shoes”, which strikes a fairly sharp chord with me. I’m a harsh shoe critic. I’m beginning to wonder whether my podiatry judgement is , in fact, the real cause of my singledom, not least because I’m such a hypocrite. My feet are as wide as they are long so I have been sporting contraceptive Birkenstocks all season rather than painfully cheese-wiring them into anything more dainty. I’m happily resigned to this because I’m not convinced I’d trust a man who genuinely fancied someone’s toes, anyway.

My colleague went to a fetish club and when she sat at the bar a man asked if he could be her footstool. he got down on hands and knees for her to rest her feet on his back and then he asked to suck her toes. Extraordinary. What if she’d had athlete’s foot? She might have been wearing PVC socks for medical reasons not as an accessory. I know another guy who has a foot fetish that became apparent after he was caught cheating with his mate’s girlfriend. They were busted sending naked foot photos to each other on Facebook, which is the singularly most unsexy thing I’ve ever heard. Those stumpy, sweaty, rough-skinned, hairy-toed shovels you aren’t even allowed to put on train seats sent via Facebook Messenger, somehow the least sexy sounding of all the apps.

Isn’t the notion that there is a scale of phone-app sexiness depressing? What happened to love letters? a phone call is a pretty rare gem today, too. now it’s text or Facebook or Whatsapp (if you are under 30 you probably Snapchat as well but I can’t fathom that out, which is proof that I’m now old). a friend is having a fully-fledged affair with someone she’s never met, via her phone. They have Whatsapp sex apparently, which I doubt is entirely gratifying given my experience of men’s multitasking abilities and the susceptibility to predictive text duck-ups. Thankfully, Facebook technology is yet to venture into the realms of smello-vision or the illicit foot-photo-fest would take an altogether weirder turn.

autumn and winter are far better for feet, especially in the country where it is entirely within reason to pass five months of the year in a decent pair of wellies (Le Chameau are the sexiest, in case you were wondering). It’s trickier in London, where you do look a berk in them – either kate-moss-2005-wannabe or like you’ve lost your labrador/marbles – so really you should only wear them if you are catching the train out and saving space to pack more woolly jumpers and bottles of booze.

I’m all for winter warmers and cometh September cometh the layers. Literally head to toe. On a day on the quad with the College Valley hunt last season, it was so cold I wore just about every item of clothing I owned. My limbs were splinted like a rigid and slightly fatter Michelin man but I was certainly warm.

Winter getup can actually be very sexy in the field, however. Good hunting boots and breeches, when worn well, will always be attractive though a word to the wise, chaps: tight Lycra breeches on men don’t cut it (or, rather, cut it too close) – leave them to the ladies. I’d love a pair of proper, traditional breeches and would invest in having some made except I think they’re a little more forgiving on the less generously bottomed women in the field. Same with breeks – they tend to look best on the willowier of the species but when they’re worn well do look seriously good.

I also like a decent hat (winter hats are good because they don’t need to be surgically attached to your scalp nor poke people in the eye when you kiss them). almost universally, men look great in flat caps. I own several myself, which go down surprisingly well in London. I’ve my eye on a pink Sussex Tweed one for this winter. I also acquired a lovely grey hicks & Brown hat in the spring that, convinced I looked sultry in, I wore in the raging summer and nearly passed out, so I’m thrilled it’s fedora o’clock again.

I must have at least 93 pairs of shoes and boots in my cupboard but I’m a longsuffering victim of sock thieves. Where the buggery they all go, I can’t fathom but I am empathatically drawn to the similarly afflicted odd-sock wearer. I find it incredibly endearing when one green and one red sock shuffle across a kitchen floor towards the aga, unless a hairy big toe pokes out, that is. The remedy there is fix them, chuck them or put a pair of slippers on pronto.

Slippers, on the face of it, should be sexually repellent but, come on, if you’re in slipper territory you’ve probably already bonked, right? Slippers are an essential and whether they’re moccasins, Uggs or furry-felt foxes, toast your toes and wear them with pride. Can I stress one thing? Yes, we love slippers; yes, odd socks are sort of sweet; and no, we (most of us) don’t get turned on by naked toenails but this is not and never shall be a green light to leave your socks on when you slip into bed. Consider that a chastity sock.

I’m not convinced I’d trust a man who genuinely fancied someone’s toes