Friday 29 July 2011

Samuel L. Jackson's shoe manifesto

Today was a day when I wasn’t going to check in to the t’interweb. I thought you could live ok without me and my shoe ramblings, and to be frank I’m sure you could. But here’s the thing, I wanted to share.

One of my neighbours passed away earlier this week and I thought I was ok with the news, until at the funeral I discovered she was eight years older than me and her 16 and 18 year old kids weren’t doing so well with the news that mom had given up her fight with the big C. It was on the whole a really special funeral, very moving, photos of the deceased and her kids and a shirt of her favourite football team across the coffin. Perhaps you’d think, ‘what the hell I can deal with this’, till her daughter stands up and starts telling the congregation how her mom was a role model and she looked up to her and wanted to make her proud, (note to self; do not ever attend another funeral wearing black without tissues; snail trails look fanciful on garden walls but not on dresses)

It was distressing, I hadn’t realised how much Kathryn Carpenter had made such an impression upon our neighbourhood until today; she was a feisty, passionate character and she will be missed by everyone who knew her. She cared about everyone and everything and that’s what made this social worker from the North special; her absolute passion about everything that mattered to her. Kath was a caring person, she was passionate and she loved what she loved – equality, diversity, people, friends, family, anything worth fighting for oh yeah and Sheffield Wednesday. We have already made a pact to take her 16 year old son to as many games as possible.

Here’s the thing, they weren’t the perfect neighbours, they fought, they shouted, they had a dog that ran around on our garden, but they were good people and their world is currently upside down. I love them for trying to pull it together. I love them for burying their differences today and most of all I love how feisty and passionate they all are, just like Kath. She would have adored today. The moving ceremony and the boozy get together afterwards, within spitting distance of the house.

I went to the ceremony in a different pair of shoes, which we will discuss later, but today, I walked to the pub in these flat babies, courtesy of the Shearers. They were a birthday present to celebrate a ‘0’ birthday last year. They’re flat and they were going to be worn for the entire 30-minute walk up the hill to the pub before another neighbour pulled up alongside us and said ‘do you want a lift?’

See that’s the thing, we have a Cameron neightbourhood without the Cameron Government; Big Society pah……We help each other, we look out for one another, we offer to help and if it’s requested, we deliver; like a Sam L. Jackson Government we give a fuck, mutherfucka.

Life round here is a bit like these shoe, comfy, easy, but covered in prickly studs. We’ll throw you a curve because we’re a bit different, but deep down we’re lovely and we will go the extra mile to help someone who needs support, but always be appreciative of that love because it’s never one way. Perhaps if we all were like that life would be so such easier, and so much nicer to share with strangers - we give if you accept and give a bit in return.

Thanks Kath, I’ve learned so much today about my neighbours and I thank you for that. You will be missed but your strength through the last few months will be remembered for ever. We’ll keep an eye on the kids and Wednesday for you.
Sniff.

Tuesday 26 July 2011

Shoeless in Stockholm

These shoes hold memories of a sad time. I bought them to wear to a friend’s wedding but the night before we were supposed to go, we got home from the office to find our home had been burgled. They had just about cleared us out; all the small electricals that weren’t bolted down had gone; DVDs, CD’s, my jewellery including a wedding band that had belonged to my grandma (Dorothy not Lilian), my engagement ring that had been too big after I lost weight, they’d even stolen the gift for the bride and groom.

That was an awful feeling to come home and see spaces where things had been just a few hours earlier and the dawning realisation that things with no worth to anyone else, yet priceless to us, were gone forever. The police were patronisingly useless at the time; I don’t really think advising someone who is grieving for a dead relative’s £10 wedding band should be told that banks offer safety deposit boxes for valuable items. Yeah thanks Sherlock, I wasn’t seeking your counsel, just your ability to track down criminals with your rapier sharp intellect and that dusty powder to show up finger-prints. (which you left all over my bloody house afterwards)

To give them their dues though, some four months later whilst raiding a drug dealer’s house about 1.5 miles away the police stumbled upon a gym bag with a gym pass card in which they managed to trace back to me. It having my photo and name on made it surprisingly easy and also ensured that suddenly they actually believed that someone had broken in to our house and made off with half of our lives; there was a moment when they insinuated it was an inside job.

I honestly couldn’t believe my luck when I got my gym card and gym bag back. It’s really difficult to convey sarcasm and indifference through the written word so let me just say, the bag and card were like a grain of sand compared to the ocean of sadness I felt in losing jewellery which I had amassed from friends and family over the years. They were worthless on the open market, but priceless to me.

Amongst the nightmare, it also transpired that my passport had been lifted. The very same passport I would need to travel to Stockholm ten days later for a work related visit. Have you ever tried to get a replacement passport because yours is stolen? Don’t expect it to be a quick turnaround, not within ten days anyway. I had to rustle up letters from the management company that was paying for me to travel to Stockholm and the guarantee of how much income would be lost if I didn’t travel. Plus I had to spend an entire day in Liverpool waiting for the passport to be fast tracked. Liverpool……sigh.

These shoes remind me of that time and also hobble me worse than a fanatical Annie Wilkes with a much-loved lump hammer. Even though they have to go, they are really nice shoes, brown leather Jasper Conran’s with a small square heel and a summery sling back. But those pointy toes, they’re just too, well, pointy for me now. Regardless of how many pain killers I wolf down these shoes just aint’ gonna make it back on to my feet. And for that reason, they’re fired.

Sadly we didn't make it to the wedding, I was too sad and fearful to leave my house when it wasn't secured, but Stockholm ten days later? Well if you’re wondering what’s with the photo with the flashy lights, look carefully and the middle one on stage, that's me.

Tuesday 19 July 2011

Destroyed, Wicked and Bad

OK I admit it, I wore heels on Monday and took 900mg of gabapentin and now have really bad rebound pain. Was it worth it? You bet your L’Oreal life on it. Summer dress, open toed heels, not big heels but heels nevertheless. For once, just once, I didn’t feel dumpy in flats. I quite like flats but if I wear them with a dress, I look about 3’6” and 250lbs. See how I side swerved the metric system for my American readers?

Actually, I never really got to grips with the metric system, it was just being introduced in the UK when I was at school and to be fair the teachers didn’t have a Scooby, so we ended up not knowing what an inch or a centimetre was. Anyway, thankfully I know how much a pint is and what a four-inch heel looks like, what more do you need?

I could make some smutty gag about four inches and needing more than that but moving on…..

Remember me mentioning the Destroy wedges that were ‘well fierce’? Well check them out and behold the fierceness. Or is that ferocity? I bought these in 1996 at the start of my musical career and they accompanied me on my first trip to Ibiza in 97, the year I handed out a whole bunch of 12” vinyls and a record label was born. Aaaaaah, good times.

Being what can only be described as a ‘short arse’ the height that these shoes gave me was ‘visa card’ priceless. I had these slinky dark blue trousers, not quite jeans but with a substantial flare that I wore with these shoes. As I remember I wore them to death; you know how sometimes material gets a sheen to it after it’s been worn and washed too many times? Yeah well these got to that stage. I was a UK size ‘8’ back in those days, when 8 really meant something and wasn’t just a number plucked out of thin air by Gap which bears no resemblance to a size 8 in Topshop or Wallis, they’re all completely different arbitrary sizes. Or is it just me that thinks that? Answers on a postcard please.

You probably wouldn’t think so to look at these shoes but I could fair bust out a few moves on the dance floor wearing them and I never once twisted my ankle. To be brutally honest though they were so huge and cumbersome that gravity had planted them firmly on the floor before I’d even had the intention to do so. I felt like I was on the cutting edge of fashion in these shoes, they were bad, funky and wicked and lots of other words we used in the late 90s to elaborate upon something's brilliance. I’m not sure if they’ve reached vintage status yet. I read somewhere that an item has to be at least 20 years old to reach vintage status but I’ve also seen ebayers advertising something from three years ago as vintage. Divvies.

Tuesday 12 July 2011

The shoes I've loved and lost (Part 1)

Writing this blog has made me ask questions of myself on a number of occasions. Why am I so addicted to shoes?
I’ve taken myself back to those moments when my feet and their coverings were important to me and I’ve pinpointed three things in my life that have made me the way I am. Or if I wuz a rapper, the way I is. Like. Innit.

I’ve taken myself back to a pair of shoes that fall in to the category of ‘the shoes I’ve loved and lost’; there will be many of these on this literary journey but these particular shoes stand out in my memory as one of the first pairs I remember in my life.

Funnily enough, they didn’t belong to me, they were Lilian’s; she was a lady I spent many hours with as a child, she was my grandmother and even now almost twenty years after her death I sometimes catch a smell of something that evokes memories of her, of her house and the times we shared. I spent a lot of time with all of my grandparents but I spent most weekends with Lil, sometimes I resented spending time with her rather than my parents and wondered why they didn’t want me at the weekend, but now as an adult I really value the close relationship I had with her. She taught me to bake cakes, tend to the garden and the value of loyalty and love having spent thirty or so years alone after the death of her beloved George, the grandfather I never had a chance to meet. To see her break down in the last few years of her life to become a shadow of her former self also taught me about the fragility of life and her passing on my then fiancĂ©, now husband’s 21st birthday gave us sadness and an opportunity to joke that she would never be upstaged. Birthday or no birthday she was going to make sure we’d always remember her. She was a complex woman, with many foibles who sometimes wrapped herself in a mantle of jealousy but I can forgive her that, after all she’d seen a lot in her time, born the same year that the Titanic slipped beneath the waves, and living to a good age of 90.

So let me tell you about the shoes. They were deepest navy suede with a leather trim on the cross over toe, they had a kitten heel but felt incredibly high and somewhat roomy at the time to a small child like myself. Nothing has changed, I’m still small. In fact if I still had these shoes today they wouldn’t fit me. They were a size 5.5 and no matter how carefully I could have looked after them I would never have grown into them being a paltry size 3. They were definitely from the 1950s and I never saw Lil wear them, they were just my ‘dressing up’ shoes along with a lot of her wardrobe that she no longer felt the need or the love of life to wear. I remember they were a French made shoe, my heart wants to believe they were a pair of Charles Jourdan shoes but my head tells me that I should think something completely different, especially as there are vintage pairs going on ebay for between $80 and $150 right now.

When Lil died, we had about a week to clear her entire house and people who could recycle anything of any worth and landfill those items no one except her would have wanted, took her clothes, furniture, shoes and memories away. We could only keep so much, and as at her passing, my feet had reached the adult size they are today, the shoes slipped from my clutches and became one of the pairs of shoes I’ve loved and lost.

I still wear her gloves in the winter, black outer and tan wool lined from St Michaels, better known now as M&S and I sometimes wear a navy chiffon scarf, which was one of the last Christmas gifts I ever bought her. Those shoes tell part of my story and allow me to commit to the Internet, the lasting memory of a woman who died before she ever knew of its existence.

My nannan, she's the one in the middle. Another one I've loved and lost.

Monday 11 July 2011

Gatecrasher and a Winter Wonderland

Ladies and Gentlemen may I present to you another pair of white shoes. These were bought online from Schuh (http://www.schuh.co.uk/) for a specific purpose, Gatecrasher’s White Party at Magna, Rotherham (http://www.visitmagna.co.uk/) in 2007, which was held on Boxing Day. It was a friend’s birthday and he wanted to go, so we duly obliged. To be fair this was a period in my life when just like The Vengaboys, I liked to party, so the idea of Gatecrasher over the Christmas period wasn’t so abhorrent to me; for my husband however….now that was a whole different kettle of pesce.

I don’t mind getting dressed up for special occasions but it galls me when I have to buy something that I probably won’t ever wear again, so it should come as no surprise that I recycled the top half of my wedding dress for the party. White shoes, black trousers, white top, sorted. Oh and the Mickey Mouse glo-sticks headband that someone gave to me during the evening; beautiful, in fact a sight to behold.

I danced for hours, mainly because it was freezing in Magna. Of all the places to have a party let’s just say a converted steelworks is not the best when it comes to wearing dinky little outfits in the middle of winter; smelting happened in those places for a reason. When the KLF/ JAMMs said it was ‘grim up north’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwtSdJaPCSI) what they meant from that lyric was not a political statement, merely a factual ‘Eh up ar kid, it’s a bit parky oooop north’*.

I thought I’d like the music that night at Magna, that I’d be able to take it for an evening but I have to admit it, after the first trance tune with a big breakdown and yearning female vocal has washed over you, you’ve heard pretty much what’s going to happen for the rest of the evening. It’s just going to get faster and bigger until eventually there’s no place left to go. Turn left at hardcore and drop off at gabba. As I remember we all made a move somewhere around 4am, though my memory left the building around 2.30am so I could be talking utter bollihocks. What I do remember is that I didn’t really feel well again from the 27th of December until New Years Eve in 2007. Apparently you live and learn; I must have learned something as I’ve never felt that bad again since.

I’ve also learned something else from these shoes; four years after purchasing them I have learned that it’s not about the heel, it’s the toe. Remember the painful Pradas? A wee heel with a pointy toe inflicting ‘11’ on the scale of pain. Well these schuhs have a much higher heel but are roomy enough around the toe for the storage of your lunchtime sandwich or as we in the grim north would say ‘packing up’. Because of this the anaconda grip isn’t in full effect and the neuroma is held at bay. I’m not sure I’d want to make like Eliza Doolittle and dance all night in them but we may be on to something. Perhaps I should try a pair of these for my next night out http://bit.ly/n33eUe

*hello friend / brother / younger person it’s a little bit chilly when you get past Watford Gap.

Sunday 10 July 2011

Prada yes, painfree no.


Let’s get this straight, I’m not a label whore, I don’t buy into brands just because they’re big names or expensive, in fact I’m actually a late adopter with most things in life. By the time naval piercings were seen on the ‘not so hot’ lists in magazines I decided to get mine done. By the time everyone started to swerve leggings, I went out and bought some, after spending about a year spouting about ‘not buying a fashion item because I remembered it from the first time around’. 'Jelly' shoes and bags get thee behind me, you live in the 80s not the now.

No, I don’t just buy things because there’s a name attached or a kudos associated with them. So ‘back in the day’ when my friends were swanning around airports dragging their overly badged Prada luggage behind them, I wasn’t moved in the slightest and stuck with my trusty Samsonite.

And then it happened. As an apology for keeping my husband in Russia for longer than anticipated in order to do more DJ gigs, a promoter who we shall just call ‘D’, bought me a Prada purse. To be fair just like any other purse, it carried coins, notes and cards, it didn’t have any super powers and other than the little red ‘Prada’ label, it just looked like a nice purse. A nice purse that oozed quality and class and said 'Prada' on it, yeah baby! I bought in to that little slice of exclusivity for a while and I loved that purse for a good number of years until it, just like all other purses that enter your life, one day it passed away.

Its ability to carry coins, notes and cards ceased and suddenly it stopped being a purse, suddenly it became a grubby piece of leather with a zip and an expensive red tag. Just as candles that never burn are only lumps of wax with a string through the middle, when something does not perform the task for which it was acquired, it’s a cuckold in your life and it needs to move on. Its presence only stops you from allowing other good things in to the space that is currently occupied, you become rooted in its past and not your present.

My love affair with the purse ended but I remembered the pleasure it gave me so when these Prada shoes became available on ebay I jumped at paying a fraction of the original cost and allowed them into my wardrobe and my heart, a space they have occupied for some time. They are a lovely shoe with an exaggerated buckle that hangs cheekily to the front of the foot, the all important pointy toe and teeny heel meant these shoes accompanied me to work on a number of occasions, though them being brown meant I had to go out and buy a whole new outfit to match. Go on be honest how many of you have bought clothes to match your ‘must have’ shoes? No, really? I should get my mom reading these blogs then I know I wouldn’t be alone.

With some sadness I have decided that these shoes are going back from whence they came, to the great ebay in the sky. I tried them on a few days ago when I took them out of the wardrobe for their photoshoot and the ever present throb and burn in the left foot was turned up to ‘11’ like Nigel Tufnel’s* Marshall stack. ‘That’s one louder, innit?’

Prada yes, painfree no. I think I'll stick to my trusty Merrels, where the strap line could be ‘For the hobbit in you’ or ‘For when your foot is as wide as it is long’.

Sigh......


*Spinal Tap guitarist.

Wednesday 6 July 2011

Leathery Faced Lovers

I can’t for the life of me remember how long I’ve had these boots, but I’d hazard a guess of at least ten years. It must be a while, as I’ve had them re-heeled at least once.

Though not so light as to invoke similarities with Ang Lee’s wire-work in ‘Crouching Badger, Hidden Demon’, I’ve always been incredibly light on my feet, so have rarely needed shoes soling or heeling. Also, even before Morton dropped by and left me his neuroma, I tended to live life in trainers or walking shoes so the fancy heels only made it out for work or ‘occasions’. There’s a trendy fashionista in here somewhere but she normally only pops out for an hour or so at the weekend, in between being dragged up and down fells by a crazy Irish Setter and the bald man.

So on a true CSI tip and without carbon dating, I can determine that because these gently worn shoe boots have been re-heeled they must have been in my life for around a decade. That and the fact that because I can’t remember buying them and the past ten years have been a hazy blur, they must have been born into my wardrobe around the turn of the millennium.

I cannot deny it, there are some creases in the leather but they’re more Sean Connery than Keith Richards. The term 'worn well' rather than 'well worn' comes to mind. They’ve not had a life of hard drugs, nicotine and cheap whiskey, no their life has been much simpler and some might say more boring, only coming out to play in the past four or five years for the occasional gig at The Corporation in Sheffield (http://bit.ly/7PTdXJ) and for winter nights out on the icy streets of the North. Of course that could be any time from the 1st of October through to the 1st of May in any given year.

I realise that they don’t have a very high heel, I believe the term is ‘kitten’, but the pointy toes possess an anaconda grip across the widest part of my hobbity shaped foot. So like the vast majority of my leathery lovers they need to go to make room for all the wonderful things that I’m welcoming in to my life. Like shoes with evocatively sexy names such as ‘Bramble’ , ‘Camille’ and ‘Pudding’.

I made that last one up.

Tuesday 5 July 2011

Miss Sixty and the footwear of Doom.

I have to say that generally speaking, I’ve not been the type to be swayed by fashion labels making shoes; it’s a bit like asking a jeweller to make you a table. He might be an absolute genius at balancing clarity with colour but unless you want your table to have a Tiffany setting where the coasters should sit, it’s not a great idea to get them to work in a medium with which they’re unaccustomed. It’s all a bit ‘Clash of the Codes’.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve bought and still buy High Street shoes, I’m certainly not a shoe snob, well actually I am, I just hate to admit it to myself; but I just think you should stick to what you’re good at. The instant Jimmy Choo released a perfume, in my opinion, the brand was devalued and it’s the same with fashion houses that move into shoes. I get it, I really do, the nature of commerce and capitalism is all about maximising the market place; squeezing more sales from your current customers because it’s easier than finding new ones and that is why, after ten years of selling clothing, a company such as Miss Sixty would move on to selling shoes.

I bought into the brand on a few occasions, back in the day they had stand out pieces at reasonable prices; the gold foil on red shirt that I wore on a number of press shots, the pink t-shirt with the kitten photo print, so when I saw these shoes, I went against my better judgement. To me these shoes epitomised summertime, where apparently the living is easy. I know some people have an issue with white shoes but in summer the rules about white shoes don’t count, do they? You don’t really have to be a girl from Essex to wear them do you? Anyway, I thought they were cute and would be smart for a summer holiday and they went with me the first time I holidayed in Sharm el Sheik, Egypt. Needless to say, after I caught the scuba diving bug on that holiday, it was the first and last time I gave a toss about which shoes went with me to that destination. After that, my foot attire consisted entirely of black neoprene booties and flip-flops. Not sexy or cute but give you that all important smell of rubber.

Going out for dinner whilst on holiday seemed like a good opportunity to give these a run out. However, to say they rubbed would be an understatement; they chafed worse than a fibreglass vest on a jogger’s nipple. And they made my feet really, really warm. I mean you could blame the +90°c heat and high humidity but I’m happy to stick with it being the shoes' fault that my feet got so warm and encouraged blistering. You can’t blame the soreness on the heat, that all came down to the shoe and it's insistence on rubbing me like an inexperienced lover on a lady nubbin.

I’ve never worn them since, as you can tell from photos of the sole. Perhaps a cool footed lady from Essex with a somewhat fleshier foot to counteract the chafing would like these as I’m offloading them to make room for a good old fashioned pair of Hush Puppies. Unless they’ve started to make tables.

Monday 4 July 2011

Bertie Boys & Hoxton Toys


I love these shoes, they are so incredibly sexy with a concealed platform and a monster mega heel. All the things that make me wince in pain and yes LDV, I know there’s beauty in pain, but it’s a bit like the smoker with emphysema having a toot on the oxygen tank before lighting up. There’s something incredibly wrong in taking painkillers that enable you to not feel nerves in order to squeeze your pinkies into shapes that the human form should not be squeezed in to. If wearing your ‘nadgers’ in a vice was a fashion statement, how many blokes would be on board? Though I’m sure in Hoxton there’d be a number of Black and Decker and Irwin Tools seen attached to a number of ‘tools’.

I tried these shoes on earlier tonight and giggled that I understood how the Chinese ladies who had their feet bound, felt. And then I googled it. Let’s just say that Google killed the giggle and no, you can’t put “Google killed the Giggle” on t-shirts, it’s mine. I hereby claim it for my own.

That is some serious body modification the Chinese people had going on. I could harp on about the subjugation of women and emancipation post 1911 banning of the practise, but I agree with James A.Crites (http://bit.ly/djuEuK) that we should avoid judging other cultures, just because they don’t conform to our norm. I’m sure there are some people who think me cultivating a herd in the bottom (and top) of my wardrobe (and my husband’s) is wrong. And they’d be right. Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself as I’m preparing to release them back to the wild.

These were bought from the fashion megalodon (part Shark, part e-commerce website) ‘ASOS’ (www.asos.com) about four years ago, primarily for work. I know what you’re thinking, at what point did I decide to go down the high class hooker route? Listen, I’m 5’1” regardless of the extra inch my passport has given me, heels are a journey out of the netherworld, the area of being noticed, where the big people live. I admit it, I tottered to work a few times in these. Then I realised that as they were size 36 and I’m a 35.5 (otherwise known as ‘effin small’, remember?) that after a while I walked out of them. Not particularly attractive….or sexy…or powerful. Just, well….baggy, if truth be known. I’ve tried the rubber heel fillers and they work for while but as they warm up, my teeny tiny plates of meat slide out of old Bertie Boys. I so wanted to be the power suit woman going 'buy, sell, sell, buy' but nah, that's not me either.

They are really gorgeous shoes and they’re virtually new, I’m sad to see them go, but regardless of the deformed metatarsal, they’re not practical. And by practical I mean, they don’t stay on my feet. Which in most books is a key necessity of shoes. Otherwise you might as well wear hats on your feet. Very comfortable, so I hear and in a wide fitting too.

Saturday 2 July 2011

The Darkness Within



Of all the shoes I’ve owned, there’s one pair above all the rest that I think helped contribute to the development of the Morton’s Neuroma and these are the bad-ass mo-fos that squeezed my foot. If truth be known they are probably a size too small; I just had to have these boots even though a European 35.5 with that amount of pointy toe is probably a UK size two rather than a size three, and that laydeeez and gentlemen is a bit of an issue when you’re cramming your size three into them.

Even now though, after the pain they’ve inflicted I still adore these boots. Look at that heel though, I mean look……at……that……heel, and the buckles and the zips and the laces and the (way too) pointy toe. Hmmmmmmmm, these are the sort of boots that you’d see being licked by the servants of Lady Heather.

These are the boots I bought when I was blazing my way through the first season of True Blood; a programme where vampires really are vampires and sparkling is something that only happens in champagne. You see, I have a ‘thing’ about vampires, Dracula, Lestat, Angel, Blade, I’m not picky; in fact I’m a slut when it comes to vampire films, I’ll watch them all. I've even waded through Bram Stoker's novel and lowered myself to IDW Publishing's vampire comic books.

I think this fascination with the blood-suckers stems from the weekends I spent as a child with Lilian, my paternal Grandmother who allowed me to stay up way past the bed-time of any normal child. It was a reciprocal agreement, she ensured I didn’t spend the weekend playing with matches, sharp implements and snuff (hard drugs back then consisted of snuff and herbal tinctures) and in return I would keep her company when the Hammer House of Horrors or old MGM and Universal screamfests were on the old black and white tv. She didn’t change to colour until after the Royal Wedding of the 1980s and even then it was only because one of the valves had gone. It made Snooker from the Crucible an interesting viewing experience.

We’d sit up and watch all manner of bawdy trash at the weekend and I’d be mesmerised by the callousness of Dracula (Lugosi, Langella, Lee and Jourdan) and the eroticism of his ‘brides’; I’m not sure I got the erotic undertones at that early age, but there was certainly something about the flowing locks and voluptuous breasts that planted seeds of interest into my subconscious.

There’s just something about a good vampire film that draws me in, I think I may have an inner goth and these boots are a symbol of that dark heart seeking a form of expression; hell even Rhianna reckons it’s good being bad.

We haven't spent much time together me and these dominatrix boots but I remember that I first wore them to a friend’s Halloween party and admittedly felt a bit of a ‘crunch’ in my foot after wearing them for a couple of hours. I seem to remember having the neuroma twinge before the boots but I could be wrong. Alternatively I may just not want to blame them, how could I? They made me do it. Yes, Mistress Boots…….