High, high heels

A few weeks ago, in a fit of female-ness, I bought some shoes online that I'm not entirely sure I'll ever be able to wear comfortably.

I understand that there are many women in the world who would find the idea of comfort in a shoe an irrelevant criteria, but I've got used to flat, wide shoes.

Shoes that happily allow my toes to retain some semblance of their usual shape and size. Shoes that are so comfortable to wear that I take my bra off first when I get home because my feet don't need the same release as my mammories.

The initial reason for the comfort was a combination of walking long distances, and arthritis.

When I was younger I had a small operation to cut the nail bed of my big toes so that they stopped growing so far into the side of my toe. Where the flesh was trying to be.

I don't know for certain that this is related to me developing arthritis in my big toe a few years later, but they reside in the same pigeonhole in my brain so it tends to think of them as conjoined. Anecdotal evidence is always stronger when it's your own.

Anyway, my heels declined in height equal and opposite to the pain increasing in my toe, and then knee.

But pain can only increase to a certain level (please god let that be true) and so I'm once again entering the lofty heights of the well-heeled.

My first adventure back onto this stage occurred with a pair of burgandy patent leather pumps with a one inch heel. They went swimmingly. After the obligatory wearing-in phase where my feet explained to the leather that they were the boss and the leather had better shape up or ship out. It shaped up perfectly.

So there I was happily browsing online and I discovered another pair of high-heels. They were also patent leather. Black patent leather.

If this had been the only attraction I would probably have moved on; I already have flat black patent leather shoes so I don't really require matching heels.

Except for the fact that the heels themselves were made from metal. Metal bolts, metal cogs and wheels, metal rivets. Mmmmmmm. Steampunk. I couldn't look away.

When they arrived I realised that my imagination of what the shoes would be like on was a vastly different thing to the reality of them being applied to my feet.

As a little girl I'd dreamed of being a ballerina, something that ballet classes killed dead before the age of six. Far too early to ever go en-pointe.

Which is a pity because that's exactly what my shoes now demand of me.

For some reason when I was looking at them online the height of the heels and the height of the wedge seemed to me to reduce the total heel height down to a mere two and a half inches. This is not only incorrect - it's more like three and a half - but two and a half inches would also be a major increase on what I've been used to.

Sigh.

I should've known better than to order shoes from Hades. The problem now is that they still look so nice I'm tempted to learn how to walk in them. Maybe just the length of the office. They could be my power shoes. When you just need that extra three inches of height.

Yeah. I'm sure I could learn.