MODERN FAMILY
DID you know that your feet can get bigger as you get older?
Apparently it is one of the tell-tale signs of getting older, but how can I have got to the age of 42 and never heard this before?
When I mentioned to my mum and sister, after a particularly unsuccessful shopping mission for autumn, that shoes must be getting smaller, they both said nonchalantly, “Oh no! That will be because your feet have grown! That is what happens when you get older. Didn’t you know that?”
No, I hadn’t. I had already worked out that the older I get the more difficult it is to lose weight, something that is only going to get worse as I read somewhere that we start putting on 2lb to 3lb a year after the age of 50.
But surely not my feet too? They are big enough as it as, and as someone with Imelda Marcos tendencies this latest news was quite a blow. It is already pretty difficult getting shoes to fit. How can I grow my shoe collection now?
I decide to check it out for myself and search “do your feet get bigger as you get older?”
And there it is in black and white. Apparently our feet can become longer and wider with age as the tendon and ligaments that link the many tiny bones lose elasticity.
It means that your toes spread out and the arch of the foot flattens, and you can gain as much as one shoe size every ten years.
Reading on, and it only gets worse. Other things I have to look forward to are longer teeth, my voice dropping, sneezing more and not sleeping very well.
And then on Sunday night I watched Terry Jones carrying the burden of old age with such dignity as he collected his lifetime Bafta and I stopped reading and stopped worrying. Having slightly bigger feet is not really that big a problem.
Although a size every ten years does sound alarming, especially as living well in to your late eighties and nineties is becoming increasingly the norm.
Perhaps state pensions of the future should be supplemented by a shoe allowance? I know that would be a definite votewinner with my lesser half, for example.
Anyway, if I’m still around in my nineties and I’m padding around on size 11s, the way I’ll look at it is I’ll be getting better value from a pedicure.