Shoe shopping with girls

Shoe shopping with girls is brilliant, isn't it? Once you've over the arguments, pushing, shoving and yelling - all of which is still an excellent social training for the Debenhams Boxing Day sales - why, there's nothing that can go wrong with this adventure at all!

First you must wander round every shoe shop and market stall within a half-mile radius, notionally to assess styles, but really to pass judgement on all women everywhere, and some men.


This is a brilliant way to spend time with your daughters because you can do some real bonding by listening to everyone squealing in horror and yelling Only a complete idiot would wear those! before telling everyone to SHUT UP because there is nothing wrong with a wonderful bejewelled pair of diamante foot fascinators with slingbacks, the like of which you must declare lovelybeautifuladorablekissykissyhereismysoul before being dragged off to stare glumly at sparkly pink trainers which are apparently much more sensible.

By the second repeat circuit (on what is now called 'the shoe run'), the shopkeepers are noticeably more awkward, since they distinctly remember a grown adult screaming next to the sparkly size 5s only an hour ago, but this time you're more critically aware and able to engage in serious debate about foot sizes and ankle width and have you got a machete? Because if I chop off my toes I think I might be able to fit inside those slingbacks.

After three more hours, two more circuits, one comfort stop, another round of vegetable spring rolls, and an argument in McDonald's - when all we want is an excuse to sit down for ten minutes. Of course we're not buying anything, we're vegetarians! Anyway we think your food is crap. (You tell 'em, Squirrel!) - we can all return to the shoe trek refreshed.

So by this means we finally arrive at the shop selling the Taiwanese copy trainers. (Lext!) Incidentally, the shop we visited first and the place where everyone said, No! No way! Too pink! Too sparkly!

But we all choose those. Except me. I'm afflicted by the idea that trainers are for gyms and not streets and should be practical and not sparkle. (Yes! I'm aged fifty! Whatever happened to plimsolls?)

On the other hand (or rather, foot), diamante slingbacks are meant for the fantastic and adorable all-woman that I really am. They perfectly grace my shapely legs and beautiful ankles, particularly when I roll up my trouser legs and see that my skin bears those little ridge marks from the sock elastic.

The next stop is home, finally, with all our new purchases. Here I can discreetly throw out the old kid shoes and stinking ripped trainers, then bore Dig rigid within 0.89 seconds of my detailed explanation of how adorable were the diamante slingbacks and why my toes are now bleeding because a girl's got to try.

But, while waiting for the boat back home, the daughters must succumb to new trainer desire. They simply must change in the street. There and then, labels and all.



Whipped along by the passion, I join in and photograph the old second hand boots I found down in Yung Shue Wan for a fiver.


They are very boring, are they not? But they were a fiver and saved me from a six hour shoe shopping experience with kids undermining my fantasy aspirations of it-girlery by telling me that diamante slingbacks are simply no good for running about in, and no way as useful as a pair of sparkly pink trainers.