Patent Kurt's Hurts

OK I admit it, I haven't written because I’ve been sulking. Not only has my foot been giving me some proper aggro as the nerve has been going through the ‘I’m awake and I’m angry, what did you do to me, freeze me? I’m awake and I’m angry’ cycle. Then to top it off, I received confirmation that I didn’t get in to the London Marathon next year. I cancelled the hotel room in the huff. You can shove yer Premier Inn right in.

I couldn’t even get a place on a golden bond, even pledging to raise two grand isn’t enough to get you in. I bet some ‘K’ list celebrity that’s slept with someone who knows someone that’s worked with someone on the X Factor has got a place. They’ll be there at the opening of an envelope on the Friday night in Hoxton, necking glasses of Moet and Chandon and gromfing down plate after plate of some posh grub that I’m too bitter to remember the name of and then they’ll be trotting down the Strand on the Sunday, after taking twelve hours to do the marathon. Perhaps if you hadn’t had to stop off every fifteen minutes to touch up your lippy darling, you might have done it in less than seven hours. Pah.

‘Bitter, party of one’

It’s probably for the best though, given the amount of thrashing the nerve is giving me at the moment. I was so huffy that I thought 'sod it' and tortured myself by wearing the most amazingly, gorgeous pair of patent Kurt Geiger shoes I will ever own to a beautiful winter wedding last week. It’s not gone unnoticed that I have no photos of me on the day as the wife of the best man, however I do have two random photos on my phone of my feet in said shoes (exhibit A and B attached m'lud) To give me some dues they were taken before we had a sherry or two to toast the happy couple......and the brilliant best man’s speech.

Ahhhh, yes I remember these shoes, purchased about five years ago from House of Fraser at Meadowhell. They should have been well over a hundred quid but I spotted them at a reduced, bonzer price of £49. To be fair, there probably aren’t any pixie footed freaks out there that they’d fit, other than me. They are teen-mc-weeny and they make me almost tall, well tall-ish….less than small, let’s stick with less than small.

After wearing them for approximately thirteen hours last Saturday, including at least an hour having a good old boogie to Dazzling DJ Dave my feet were squealing with delight to be set free of the corsets that had bound them for so long and both my feet were shall we say, a tad on the 'sore' side on the Sunday. Thankfully I didn’t have to get up and toddle off for Marathon training.

Perhaps the ballot outcome wasn’t so bad
after all.
Pah!

Studmuffin or bust

So it’s two weeks since round two of the cryo and the pain kicked in after about day six. Thankfully gabapentin came to my aid, riding in on its 300mg yellow casing. It might be a while before I can, but I can’t wait to slip on these babies.

From the shoe stable of Mr Mr Kurt Geiger these are comedically called ‘Studmuffin’. Yep, seriously that’s the name on the box of these shoes. I bought these when I refused to be torn away from heels but knew that I had to make a change from the pointy-toed monsters that had led me down the painful garden path in my pre-neuroma days. Like an addict I told myself I could just have a heel without the pointy toe and get by, I could just get a small fix and that I would be ok, I could manage it, I could control my urges and desires, I would be ok having a small heel and a roomy toe. And pretty much, I was right.

These were the shoes I wanted, nay needed for a friend’s wedding in 2010. I wasn’t sure if I could make it through the day and night in the Studmuffins so I bought a relatively flat wedge back up pair of shoes from Dune that accompanied me to Stoke on Trent for the wedding and reception. The wedges gave me height without pain and also, two pairs of shoes for the same event with an excuse of wanting to ensure a pain free day, sneaky huh?

I ended up wearing the wedges in the day-time, they had the incredibly unimaginative name of “Madrid”, but then I slipped on the Muffins in the evening when we got back to the hotel. It was a good day and a good night and my foot didn’t hurt very much at all but to be honest that might have been the alcohol. Just saying….

Subsequently I have found that these shoes have become my greatest ally in the need for height coupled with the need for a pain free life. Whenever I have slipped on a dress over the summer they have been my gently caressing non-threatening friends whilst in the office, at a funeral, at a birthday party and at numerous other non-events where a dress called for heels to avoid the appearance of being the small, tubby lass with fat calves and ankles (cankles). I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get reacquainted with the muffins by the end of September when I’m off to a wedding. Quite frankly, if I have to wear casual slip-ons I might as well just tip up in a pink shell suit, yeah but, no but...

It’s the Muffins or bust.

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.

Lusty Beggars

That Belfast weekend two years ago was a memorable experience for so many reasons, not forgetting the beautiful wedding at Lusty Beg Island. The weather behaved like a perfect gentleman; wonderful with a hint of stroppiness in the form of raindrops just as the bride and groom kissed. The number that fell could probably be counted on one hand but it did make me want to shout ‘it’s spitting, it’s spitting, everybody in’ at an inopportune moment. I managed to calm my inner comic and avoided spoiling the big day.

In fact, narrowly avoiding spoiling the big day seemed to be a theme for the wedding, the groom had forgotten the edit of the ‘first dance’; cue a number of people frantically downloading the track from iTunes on their iPhones. It was sorted, but with a short break in proceedings. Then of course there was the obligatory domestic amongst the wedding guests, which fortunately only became evident the morning after when we had to ferry a guest member back to Belfast because his ‘missis’ had left him stranded on the island. He didn’t seem to mind much and ensured he had a number of bottles of beer for the journey back to Belfast, just to ‘take the edge off the journey you understand’.

I also seem to remember ‘breaking’ the father of the groom after having him bust out some moves with me on the dance floor. It really was a great wedding and the black suede Manolos spent most of the day on my feet; I say most of the day as they did have to sit out some of the dancing, apparently they were a little tired and they knew that I was having the first pinch of the neuroma. Bless them, for being so understanding; they didn’t sit in the corner though, after all no one puts baby in the corner.

Like most of my heeled shoes these Manolos haven’t seen the outside of my wardrobe in at least a year and when I checked them out earlier today, in order to take the photo I noticed that sadly they’re a tad more battered than I thought they were, guess I’ll have to keep them after all…

I'll take them!

The shop assistant watched me suspiciously as I wandered around the shop picking out my favourite shoes. I didn’t know at the time but it seems that in high-end retail units they always display the smallest size that they have, I realised this after asking her three times if they had certain pairs in my size and she always replied, ‘the smallest size is the size on display’, who would have thought it eh? It didn’t take me long to realise that there was probably only four pairs in my size in the entire shop. I’m a 35.5 and for those that don’t know European sizes that translates to “effin’ small”. When trying three of the pairs on I walked out of them like an infant practising in mommy’s shoes, but the pair that had the strap across and the cute gold button was the perfect pair, heels like skewers, jet black exterior, grey leather lining, did I mention the heels? Oh yeah baby.

It was only when I uttered the immortal words ‘I’ll take them’ that the snooty assistant seemed to thaw. Very soon I was skipping back up King’s Road suddenly feeling a lot less hung over and sweaty. To celebrate parting with an inordinate amount of money for some bits of leather we popped in to The Cadogan Arms on King’s Road to partake in their finest burger. We utilised four seats; me, my husband, Mel and the shoes.

I have a number of memorable moments wearing those Manolos. First outing was for the Parry wedding which I believe was a good night, can’t remember much of it to be honest though I do remember thinking how comfortable the shoes were even after three hours of dancing. Then there was the interview; I got the job and it was definitely down to the shoes, not how I interviewed on the day.

The last time I wore the Manolos was exactly 4 years ago at Fountains Abbey attending a wedding. It was about two weeks after the devastating floods in Yorkshire and I know that’s when I last wore them because I noticed the mud and grass still on the heels when I got them out yesterday to take the photo. Oooops.

Happy Anniversary for yesterday Mr & Mrs Shearer.