Shoes

My shoe size is 8 1/2. (Fellini shoes!) Which means I sometimes have trouble finding a new pair, many shoes being available only in whole numbers!  I like those gadgets in shoe stores where the salesman can set down while measuring a customer's foot. (They've always seemed nifty to me.)

I wonder who invented high-heeled shoes?  It must have been someone who hated women! (They say the thing about high heels is that they help a woman do a sexy walk Marilyn Monroe-style.) I guess it's no worse than in China where girls had to undergo foot-binding because men wanted a wife with deformed feet.  I once saw a documentary where an old Chinese peasant man who reminded me of Li'l Abner's Pappy said, "In the old days it was easy to win an argument with a woman.  All you had to do was step on her feet." That tells you everything...

When I was writing my Ph.D. thesis about British people in China, one of the people I read about was Alicia Little, merchant's wife and travel writer, who was instrumental in starting China's anti-footbinding movement!

I like that time of year in March or so when I stop wearing my winter boots and go back to regular shoes.  My feet feel fairy-light!  I think March is my favorite time of year. (I used to prefer April, but as I get older I prefer the very start of the warmer weather.) People who live in the tropics don't know the recurring joy of spring, let alone of March.