Just for the love of shoes

There was a time when my hussssband and I (to quote the Queen, RIP) would say that, when people bought his books, they were contributing to The Jennie Shoe Fund. Not because I needed shoes, mind, but because I loved shoes.

I’d long realised that shoes are uniquely forgiving – particularly the most ridiculous ones. You could wear anything at all, you could gain weight, lose weight (as if!), or feel like hell, and it never mattered so long as your shoes were fabulous.

And I had fabulous shoes: black slingbacks with ostrich feathers, sky-high red Mary-Janes, dusty pink pleather Stella McCartneys, sea-green velvet with gold heels… Oh, I could bore you about my shoe loves for days.

I learned firsthand high heels don’t have to be crippling or disempowering, particularly when dangling delightfully off your feet as you perch on a barstool, sipping a cocktail, being witty and erudite.

They felt like investments, if not in the future then in me. I even dreamed of a revolving glass cake stand for shoe display purposes.

Sure, I wore flats mostly, but my soul soared at the sight of gorgeous shoes.

Then my feet gave up on me: I developed plantar fasciitis.

Gradually I wore my preciouses less and less.

I packed them away in their boxes in the hopes that one day a potential daughter-in-law with size eight clodhoppers, the sort of feet that change the tides when wading, feet like mine, might prove to be a shoe aficionado, might cherish them too.

The pain came and went for months, but now I can barely walk. I used to pound everywhere, now I hobble nowhere at all. If I limp to the end of the block, I want a taxi to take me home.

An MRI revealed the situation has badly deteriorated, and I think of my dad who limped until his dying day, his feet in agony. Perhaps we Ridyards are descended from the original Little Mermaid, who was given legs only to forever feel she was walking on knife blades.

But treatments have advanced, and prognoses improved: I’m awaiting a booking for precision injections in the soles of my feet given using ultrasound so as not to cause further damage.

It better work, because both my boys fell for dainty-footed Cinderellas.