The Red Shoes...

Last time I was here I mentioned my latest pair of shiny red shoes.   I wear red shoes a lot.   They're my 'go to' shoe!   And, unlike many women, I'm not a big shoe person.   I try to hold onto comfortable shoes for years, and hate buying new ones, as I fear they will tear my tender toots to shreds.

As they often do!

I like handbags, though.   I've got a red clutch bag that I adore and wish I could use more.   It's very like this one, made by Karina Hesketh, via Pin Up Polly.

So, red shoes.   I'd never really thought about it until a therapist, not mine, noticed my shoes recently - She drew an analogy to the film, Red Shoes, by Powell and Pressburger.   A film that I'm not terribly familiar with - About why I choose red shoes...   What draws me to them.   

I like the colour red, for a start.   I'm currently sitting by the heart(h) of my home and it's painted a warm dark, almost-blood-red.   So are two other walls in the room.     The rug under my feet is deep red wool with a small Rennie Mackintosh-style rose stripe. 

This has got me thinking now.   My kettle is a red Duralit model.   We've only just thrown out the matching toaster, because it no longer functioned as it ought.   The new one is silver and looks like a commercial toaster - I like tough things!   I'm prone to being a little bit cack-handed when it comes to handling implements...

I started to ponder on the subject of red shoes.   And then I realised that I don't think I've ever been without a red pair - of boots or shoes - in my wardrobe.

I have a short 'Pixie'-like pair of boots for winter.   Once they're on my feet, I hardly ever take them off.   Lourdes knows what I'll do when they finally wear out!   I'm hoping they won't.   Ever.

I've also got a calf length pair which I haven't seen since before last winter, and when the kitchen renovations began a lot of schtuff went off with the house-faeries!   

Thinking back to the Eighties, I wore a matching pair of teetering court shoes in rotation for my work in a factory shop-floor's office - Very 'The Rag Trade' - One was blue, one red.   

At University I remember going with my then boyfriend, now my husband, and his friend to a shop in the city where I fell for a long red pair of lovelies that kept my tootsies warm for years...

I wore flat shoes a lot then.   Turquoise pumps with a yellow star across the front.   I remember another pair that were orange with green soles.   I like colour in my life and I'm not afraid of it.   For years I did steer clear of black as it made me look very pale.   Now I've made my peace with black.   I've also always had a black pair of shoes too, while I'm on about it.

Black and red - I used to wear black and red combined back in the Eighties.   A colleague said he believed they were my 'war-like colours'.   I might have been angry during some of those years, when I couldn't achieve promotion at work, owing to recruitment freezes, in spite of my bosses telling me I should have ambitions towards promotion.   I became a little twisted then.   All those years seem so far away from my life as a fledgeling counsellor and soon to be trainee psychotherapist now, I must admit...

My favourite ever car was my red Alfa Romeo.   We had an earlier mustard model, but the red stole my heart until it rusted to scrap on the drive-way.   I thought it looked like a crouched tiger when it wasn't moving.   Red obviously features muchly in my life.

Why?

I found this short article - Well, why do the work, when someone else has?   I'm lazy good like that!

"Scientists have finally made a breakthrough, tackling an important issue close to the hearts of many people: “Why do women wear red shoes?”

Dr Elaine Webster, a Sociologist from Otago University, New Zealand has spent the past six months asking why women wear red shoes. And, she has concluded that young women wear them for excitement, and out of a desire to be noticed; whilst most men associate red shoes with sex and sin.

Dr Webster, whose long term interest is “dress and identity” conducted the research after being impressed with the way that women spoke about their red shoes. She said:

Women always say ‘my red shoes make me feel great, I love my red shoes’. They never say ‘I love my brown shoes’.

Many of the women interviewed made a connection between their red shoes and Red Shoes, the film of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale, or Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz.

Dr Webster believes footwear, more than any other items of clothing, has a special quality in our lives. And red shoes are a way to lift you out of a drab and ordinary existence. She stated:

Women and some men wear red shoes because they’re really wanting a richer and more exciting life than the one they are living."

So, I have no life but live in and through my dreams.   'Nuff said, non?!


You knew that anyway, right?   

I think I need to put a clause in my will to ensure that when I dance off this mortal coil I'm buried with a pair!


Oh, and Happy Ostara by the way!   Mwah!   Gotcha with a big fat slobbery, but nice, kissy-poo!


Serves you right for lingering over my red shoes!

Happy New Year - New me? Know me?!

Well, this Christmas and New Year holiday has been a bold, relatively quiet and muchly daft one...

We've had no snow to speak of - Just a few short flurries which didn't do any damage - Do you remember, we've been snowed in for the past three years until cabin fever set in and I threatened to eat the chair legs!

We've been mainly ferrying a somnambulent and nocturnal teen (he turns 20 in February *gasp*), as he segued from one social appointment to another, returning every other day to refuel and snore the rafters loose (or was that me?!)...   It was like having to take a toddler off to playdates again!   This meant we could go nowhere special...

We spent part of some evenings in the pub, catching up with gossip - Who's put whose windows in, driven their car into a ditch, run off with whose wife, that kind of thing - Toasting our tootsies by the fire - Drinking our spoils from the Annual Leek Club Bottle Draw - (I won back the ghastly bottle of white wine I had in fact donated!) - while trying to avoid the fall-out from the septuagenarian landlord and landlady, who are my sort-of substitute parent figures, but who are also at each other's throats over her plans to semi-retire, finally and long-deservedly...   This situation will be resolved in one way or another, I'd guess.   I hope it's happily.

A lost earring of mine - Silver, with a tiny heart that dangles - resurfaced.   My friend had only recently gifted them to me for my birthday.   Phew!   I am hopeless with earrings, but I do still love them.

Meanwhile, I watched some of the films I had been longing to retreat into, and became a part of my sofa.   I even squeezed in Hitchcock's Rear Window, with my favourite, Jimmy Stewart!

We stoked the stove, burning coal on it for the very first time and occasionally feeding it fragrant logs.

We tickled the rats and, at the same time, learned something about neuroscience from scientists LINK.

Sadly, Grizz broke up with his lovely girlfriend (owner of said rats).   We think that means we've got custody...   We don't know why they broke up and can't find out...   I know it's not our business, but we are sad about it...

In other news, with my 'gin-goggles' on on New Year's Eve, I bought a beautiful handbag in local designer, Karina Hesketh's, sale.   I've lusted after it for months at full price, and then I take it as an omen that if no-one else has bought it in her sale, it and I are meant to be...   Karina's going to be designing some more soon.   Oh dear.   Mind you, I do only buy one-ish of her uniquely designed and beautifully hand-made bags a year, so I can't be described as anything like obsessed.   No...

This is a metallic pink leather brogue bag with a cross-body strap, integrated with a vintage (Fifties'?) scarf depicting the Dolomites in Italy.   This is a bag that called my name, like a Siren ensconced beside the River Coquet!

And, we learned on New Year's Day (but not from Bono) that my eighty-plus year old father-in-law had run himself over with his own car...   Three weeks ago.   And my helpful sister-in-law only saw fit to inform us on New Year's Day...

I rail against my socially apathetic in-laws, out-laws, I do!

I don't know what I can do about them?   Obviously nothing...   'You can't teach old dogs', etc!

Meanwhile, I build bridges, forge friendships, make amends...

Happy New Year, mes amis, bold and beautiful as you are...

I wish you all that you could ever wish for yourselves...

For myself, all I require is some peace and some certainty.

Meanwhile, your love and comments are enough!

Merci mille for you and them.   Mwah!   Well, the mistletoe's still up above the doorway, so I'd suggest a kiss is in order!