Is it just ME?

It’s so maddening to be told to take your shoes off

TIME was, being a guest meant being treated like a queen. Your hostess, having chosen to invite you to her home, would do everything to make you feel welcome. Take your coat, settle you in the best chair and offer you a drink, a nibble, a compliment — in essence, make you feel valued and at home.

But go to a friend’s house today and you’re left in no doubt this is not your home. Your welcome depends on adherence to house rules.

You’ll be told your dinner will be dull — ‘we’ve gone gluten-free’ — or, worst of all, informed you’ve arrived at a ‘no-shoes house’.

When I was ordered to put my slingbacks into a basket in the hall, I protested that without shoes my feet would freeze. I might slip, I added. And who has a pedicure in January, I pleaded.

What I meant was: ‘Without the height of my heels, my dress looks dowdy.’

Deaf to my pleas, my hostess offered me a pair of towelling guest slippers. You can imagine what they did for my If people start to remove heels in my hall, I scream: ‘Stop it! This is a shoes-on house! carefully contrived look — and my mood. Quite apart from the sartorial implication, who wants to wear Other People’s Slippers?

So where did the ‘no-shoes house’ idea come from?

Did it start when a certain type of young person became obsessively houseproud and germ-phobic?

Or did it come from a fantasy about a world where anything outside the cocoon of the family and friends is threatening and dirty?

Should we blame the recent obsession with all things Nordic? Apparently, no selfrespecting Scandinavian would wear anything but slippers indoors.

Heels, it seems, are the antithesis of hygge.

Whatever the reason, I’ve had enough. Now, when people come to my house and start to remove their shoes, I scream at them: ‘Stop it! This is a shoes-on house! I don’t want your revolting feet on display!’

And the next time someone asks me to take off my courts, I’m going to vote with my feet. And I suggest you do the same.