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.

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.