(I am never so happy as I am when I’m on holiday…)

Whoops, by going on holiday, I’ve gone and lost all my readers again. For those of you still grimly hanging on in there a) thank you! and b) I’m just popping in to say that I took pity on you, sucked it up and coughed up the money to renew my Flickr Pro account, so I could post all one million and twelvty of my holiday photos over there, rather than forcing you all to sit through them here, like one of those boring relatives who drinks all your tea and talks for hours about their awesome! vacation! I would never do that, obviously. I’d drink all of your wine instead…

Anyway, since I’ve been home, absolutely nothing has happened. Seriously, nothing. I HATE being home. On Sunday night, I woke up in an absolute panic, totally unable to work out where I was, and convinced that the mirrored wardrobe doors (I HATE mirrored wardrobe doors) in front of me were actually windows. I was terrified. And then, when I finally realised that I was, in fact, in my own bed, in my own home? I was gutted.

(Then last night? Last night Terry woke up to find me standing at the bottom of the bed, absolutely hysterical, and screaming at him to GET OUT OF BED NOW BECAUSE OMG THERE IS TOTALLY A CRAB IN THERE!” The calmer he remained, the more hysterical I became (I mean, for God’s sake, CRAB! In the BED!), until he finally had to force me to sit down (me making “crab eyes” at the corner of the bed the whole time, and repeat veeeerrryyy sssllooowwwllly that there was. no. crab. in. the. bed. And I didn’t believe him, so I went to take refuge in the bathroom, and it was only once I got there, with the light switched on, that I started to think that hey, maybe that crab I saw wasn’t actually real. I still checked for it when I got back to bed though.)

Anyway, the photos are here. If you make it through them all, congratulations, you have better stamina than me. I’m pretty sure there are shots there that I even I couldn’t be bothered looking at. Also, someone found my blog today after searching for “Forever Amber’s shoes” so rather than disappoint that person and risk turning away a potential reader (HI! Come in! Pull up a chair! Would you like to see my holiday snaps?), here are the shoes I bought on my second-last day in Florida:

Vivienne Westwood for Melissa. On sale. Want them in every colour now.

(I’ve just realised that that person may have been searching for shoes belonging to the heroine of the BOOK Forever Amber. In which case, this will have been a crushing disappointment, for sure…)

P.S. My cold is a little better, but the coughing would be keeping me awake at night if I wasn’t still on American time, and lying awake all night anyway, watching for CRABS.

P.P.S. Sanford Airport never replied to my email about my jacket. Curses.

I know the US government won’t let me live here for more than a few weeks at a time (probably wise of them, all things considered), but if they ever want to change their minds on that, I now know exactly where I want to live: Palm Beach. All I’ll need is for everyone who reads this blog to donate $1 million dollars and I reckon I just might be able to afford a condo in one of the poorer areas. Is everyone OK with that? Good…

So, yesterday, as you’ll have gathered, we spent the day in Palm Beach, with a short visit to Boca Raton. For some reason, every time I go to south Florida, it pours with rain, and this was no exception. Here’s what I wore:

OMG NO PANTS!

(I was actually wearing shorts, by the way. I just look like I wasn’t, which possibly accounts for the weird looks I kept getting.)

That woman you can see coming up behind me? Was super-stylish, and kept following me around, purely to make me look like even more of a fool, I’m sure. Actually, ALL of the women in Palm Beach were super-stylish, and, interetsingly enough, were all dressed in black, with spindly high heels. This amused me, because last year when I was here I posted a photo of myself in a navy dress, and someone left a snarky comment saying “OMG, BLACK? In FLORIDA? How shocking.” And now every time I come out of my room dressed in black or navy, my family all chorus “BLACK? In FLORIDA?” (Even when we’re in Scotland.) Black was pretty much de rigeur down in Boca and Palm Beach, though, so I’m glad Terry let me borrow his classy black poncho thing.

We’d booked onto a Palm Beach tour, on an amphibious bus, which takes you through the town then plunges into the water of the intracoastal and takes you past the homes of people like Celine Dion and the guy who owns Walgreens, etc. I was almost sick with envy over the side of the bus/boat (Buboat?). As I say, it POURED relentlessly the whole time we were doing this, and great waves of water kept rolling off the roof and onto the people at the back of the boat (luckily we were at the front), but hey, it was all strangely atmospheric, and we still managed to have an amazing time. Plus, we have a great excuse to go back and see it in the sunshine.

Afterwards, we visited Worth Avenue, which is basically Palm Beach’s version of Rodeo Drive. Naturally, I continued to wear a black plastic bag, just to freak out all the shop assistants:

I also returned to the Mother Ship:

Yes, they had a sale. No, I didn’t buy anything, despite being sorely tempted. I suspect I will rectify that soon, though…

Aaaand, looking back at my camera, that seems to be pretty much all I have from Palm Beach, so here’s what we did for the rest of the week:

I bought shoes.

I bought more shoes.

Um, yeah.

I wore NAVY. In FLORIDA. I mean, can you EVEN?

I wrote my name in lights…

…and pretended to be in The Beatles, except with one member missing.

Here’s the missing Beatle:

And now the sun is shining again, so I’m off to do this:

Only with less posing and more, well, snoring probably. See you all soon!

Foot fetishists. They’re everywhere, aren’t they? And by “everywhere” I mean “they’re on eBay”. In large numbers, apparently.

Last week I decided to sell some shoes, you see. (I know! Me getting RID of shoes rather than acquiring them: who’da thunk it?) And as with every other time I’ve ever tried to sell shoes on eBay, this brought the foot fetishists out in droves.

It always happens the same way. A question floods in. The question is from a man. First of all, the man comments on how “sexy” the shoes I’m selling are (Note: always “sexy”. Never “cute” or “beautiful”or “stylish”, or any other of the dozens of words you could use to describe a pair of shoes. Just “sexy”.) Sometimes he’ll say that he wants to buy them for his “girlfriend”, but other times he’ll just miss out this part and leave me to conjecture what someone named “Jim” or “Pete” or “Brian”, or whatever, wants with a pair of size 4 ladies shoes. Then comes the kicker:

“If it’s not too much trouble,” Brian will say (for he is a polite young man at heart),  “could you take some photos of your feet inside the shoes? It’s, um, so I can see how high the heel is, because there’s no other way to know that than by looking at a strange woman’s feet.”

Now, you could argue that this is a perfectly reasonable question for Brian to be asking. But in response, I would argue that Brian is a foot fetishist. He is only interested in seeing photos of my feet in high heels. It’s just a feeling I get. A sixth sense, if you will. There’s always just something a little bit off about these messages. Something that triggers my “this is a foot fetishist” alarm. Also:  women never ask these questions. I mean, I’ve been using eBay for years. In that time, I’ve sold a lot of shoes. NEVER have I received a question from a woman who’s asked me to take some photos of my feet in the sexy, sexy shoes. And in all the time I’ve been buying shoes (which is… a while) I’ve never emailed a complete stranger and said, “Oh, hai, could you send me some photos of your feet, please?” It’s just not done, is it? OK, sure: sometimes a shoe looks different on the foot than it does in the image. Sometimes you really do need to see it being worn to know what you think of it. But, I dunno, something about asking a stranger to photograph their feet for you just strikes me as odd. Maybe it’s just me?

The final clue that all is not what it purports to be on Planet Brian/Steve/Tony is the final line of the message which always, without exception, says something like, “By the way, could you please not publish this question on the auction listing? Just send the photos to my private email instead.”

Uh-huh. FOOT. FETISH.

I should add here that I have nothing against people with foot fetishes. I really don’t. I honestly couldn’t care less what people do in the privacy of their own homes, or what turns them on. Each to their own, after all. It’s only when they try to involve ME in their little fantasies by, say, trying to trick me into sending them photos of my body parts, that it starts to bother me. I know it’s not actually harming anyone (although it IS wasting my time, given that these people have no intention whatsoever of bidding on the shoes), but even so, it’s still devious and underhand, and, you know, some women charge good money for those kinds of “services”.

(That was a joke.)

With that in mind, I’m afraid to say the latest “can you send me photos of your feet” message was the one that tipped me over the edge. In fact, I was so annoyed to be receiving this request AGAIN that a red mist of anger descended over my eyes, and in my haste to send my “Actually, no, I won’t be emailing photos of my feet to strange men on the Internet,” response, I may have accidentally checked the box that says “publish this question and my response on the listing”. Whoops. My bad.

Still, I guess there’s no harm done. If it WAS a genuine, reasonable request, people will see it as that and think no ill of my high heel lovin’ correspondent. And if it turns out that Brian IS actually the kind of man who tries to get women to send him photos of their feet for his own, er, use, well, so be it. After all, if you don’t think there’s anything wrong with asking people to send you photos of their feet, then there’s no reason to be embarrassed, is there?

So, in common with pretty much everyone else on Twitter, I joined Formspring, which is a site where people ask each other questions and, er, answer them.

I was actually a bit wary about this. I tried something similar a while back, and a lot of the questions were a bit… well, it was like people thought I was standing trial or something, and they were the hard-bitten lawyers for the prosecution. So I dropped the whole question thing, and forgot all about it. But then everyone started joining Formspring, and if there’s a bandwagon in town, I like to be on it (albeit I’m usually the last aboard, and the bandwagon is pulling out of the station with me running after it like a lunatic), so I joined.

And then I sat and worried that this was going to turn out to be A Mistake, and that the anonymous nature of the thing would mean I’d just get the usual bunch of “Y r u so ugly?” and “How much r the combustion engines u r selling in ur shop?” and “Do u no u suck lol lol lol!” stuff masquerading as “questions”. But so far, so good, and because there are only so many posts I can write about the Mouse Man and how much the people at the gym annoy me (Seriously, people, PERSONAL SPACE. Get some.), I’m going to be using some of them as blog fodder over the next few… however long. So if there’s a burning question you’ve always wanted to ask me, now is the time to ask it, and there’s even a handy little box over in the sidebar for you to do it, although feel free to post your question in the comments box here if you prefer. It can be, like, Formspring Friday or something. OK, maybe not.

(Just nothing creepily personal, or rude, please. And no maths questions. And remember: I! AM! NOT! A! SHOP!)

Oh, here are the first set of questions and answers:

(more…)

Well, I’ve always suspected it, but now I know for sure: I was born without a brain.

The proof of this came on Sunday afternoon, when I decided to hit the town and do a little bit of shopping. This, I might add, was in addition to the shopping I’d already done on Saturday, and which had merely served to whet my appetite for the much larger shopping expedition that would be known as “Sunday”. Oh yes, Saturday’s shopping had been but the appetiser: Sunday’s event would be the main course, and I drifted off to sleep on Saturday night happily envisioning the long, leisurely stroll around the shops I’d enjoy the next day.

Of course, what I’d failed to take into account was the fact that the next day was Sunday, and that I generally like to spend my Sunday mornings languishing in bed, reading books, drinking coffee and basically being a lazy-ass. Yesterday was no different, so by the time I got myself showered and caffeinated, it was already almost 3pm, and most of the shops would be closing in another couple of hours. Undaunted,  I quickly threw on whatever clothes were available at the time, and headed out on my grand expedition.

It was only as I walked from the car park to the mall that I realised something was wrong. I felt… different, somehow. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I felt like I was walking funny. (Funnier than usual, I mean.) And the more I thought about this, the more I realised it was true: in fact, when I finally entered the mall and started walking across the tiled floor, I realised I sounded different too, in that one heel was making a particularly loud “click” every time it made contact with the floor, while the other one was pretty much silent.

“Damn!” I thought. “I bet the heel tip has come off this boot, and I’ll need to get it replaced!” So I stopped, and I looked at the offending boot. “Strange,” I thought. “The heel tip’s still there, and doesn’t look like it’s coming off any time soon.  And even stranger: THAT’S NOT THE BOOT I PUT ON BEFORE LEAVING THE HOUSE! In fact, I can clearly remember pulling on a different boot altogether. OMG, I must be going mad!”

But I wasn’t. Or, no, actually, I was: but not for the reason I first thought. Lookit:

Do you see anything wrong with this picture, readers, DO YOU?

OK, how ’bout now?

Yes! I went out wearing TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT BOOTS! Witness:

Two. Completely. Different. Boots.

Well. As soon as I realised what I’d done, I felt like there was a giant spotlight shining down on me, out of which a disembodied voice was shouting, “Your attention, shoppers! Crazy lady here wearing two different boots! Feel free to mock her mercilessly!” Now, I’m 100% sure that most people in the world – and, more, specifically, in the mall – have better things to do with their lives than look at my mismatched legs. BUT. When you’re out in public wearing two different boots (and walking with a slight list, thanks to the fact that the heels on said boots are not exactly the same height, GOD) you just don’t feel like that. In fact, I felt like all eyes were upon me. I felt like everyone had noticed, and was laughing. And also that, if I was particularly unlucky, some of them would be saying to each other, “Hey, isn’t that the chick who has the blog about shoes? And who calls herself ‘Shoeperwoman‘? Could she not have at least tried to make sure her shoes matched before leaving the house? Doesn’t she OWN a mirror? Or a brain?” Or maybe, “Quick! Someone call The Fashion Police! Oh no, wait: that IS The Fashion Police!” Hoist by my own petard, people, hoist.

I tried to continue with my shopping, but it’s actually pretty hard to shop when you’re having to duck behind a rack of clothes every time someone comes near you, and of course, because The Others have such a strange fascination with me, it’s absolutely impossible for me to occupy a space inside a shop without at least six other people appearing and trying to squash into that space with me. I knew it was no good:  something would have to be done, and by that I mean, “shoes would have to be bought, what a shame!”

Luckily for me, one of the stores near the entrance of the mall is New Look, and New Look is a veritable haven of cheap n’ cheerful shoes. I lurched into the store, looking like a mad, drunk woman, grabbed a random dress from the first rail I came to, and used it as a shield to cover my legs while I ran rolled to the shoe section. Once there, I bought the cheapest pair of shoes I could find, which I put on as soon as I’d finished paying for them:

OK, they may not have been the absolute cheapest, but they were the reddest. I may be mad, but I’m not stupid. Oh no, wait…

(Do not be fooled by the appearance of these shoes, readers: they may look harmless enough, but these shoes are made of EVIL and they proceeded to rub my ankles raw as I walked around in them. Which I guess is what I get for not being able to dress myself properly. I’d like to say I’ve learned my lesson, but I think we all know I probably haven’t…)

Seventy-one pairs of shoes. That’s the answer to one of my most frequently asked questions (The others: “If my husband’s grandfather’s dog’s sister’s auntie was a ginger, but I have black hair, do you think my children will be gingers too, and can I drown them in a sack if they are?” “Will those boots you wrote about in 2007 fit me, do you think?” and “Can I buy three of these dresses, please?”). It’s usually followed almost instantly with, “And what do you actually DO with all those shoes?” To which I always answer, “I thread them all onto a piece of string and wear them around my neck, obviously, what do other people do with shoes?”

I bring this up because I’ve been asked The Question a couple of times recently, and only found out the answer myself last night, when I decided to actually count the damn things. (Counting shoes: not as interesting as you might think, kids! Bit like counting sheep, actually…) Seventy-one pairs, not counting running shoes, and wellingtons, and those ancient ballet flats I really should throw out, but God, they’re so comfortable, maybe I’ll just give ‘em another week. I’ll be honest: I thought the magic number would be higher than that, and my first reaction was “Wow, that’s hardly any! I’m really letting the shoe-blogging side down, here, must buy some more!”, but of course, seventy-one pairs of shoes IS quite a few, I suppose. Well, a few more than “a few”, hmmm?

I just realised this post sounds like it’s building up to some kind of dramatic “I’m giving up shoes for Lent!” type of declaration. But, er, it isn’t. For one thing, being a complete and utter heathen means I don’t have to give up ANYTHING for Lent (which is awesome, especially when other people give up chocolate. It leaves more of it for me.), and for another thing: AS IF. So I’m not giving up buying shoes. I am, however, going to start trying to wear them all more often, rather than just that same pair of tan peep toes (summer) and black boots (winter) all the time. Then I will …well, then I will probably buy some more.

“Why shoes?” is always the next question in this particular conversation. To which I say: why not? I can’t claim that shoes are the answer to world peace, or that they have shown me the meaning of life, or anything deep like that: I just like them. Always have, right from the moment I slipped on a pair of those toy “high heels” once childhood Christmas, and probably always will. Shoes are fun. You never have to worry about whether they’ll make you look fat, or clash with your hair. They last for years (many of the pairs in my collection are pensioners in shoe-years), you don’t ever have to iron them, and they’re good to look at. What’s not to like?

Anyway, hopefully this answers the burning question on at least two people’s lips this week. And I have to admit, it’s nice to get a question I can actually answer for once, rather than the usual stuff about “ginger” babies…

I woke up with a lurgy this morning: sore throat, runny nose, general feeling of, “Oh crap, January done kicked me in the ass AGAIN.” Great!

Actually, that’s not quite true: I woke up in the middle of the night with the lurgy. My throat felt like sandpaper, and my trusty bottle of water was still on my desk in the office, where I’d left it, so I was forced to run the gauntlet of the hall, and all of the DEMONS that live in it  (No more demon noises to report, by the way. We’re taking the “if we just stick our heads in this handy pile of sand, here, it’ll be like it never happened!”) to retrieve it. It was at that point that I more or less abandoned all plans for the day, including my plan to return to the gym for THE FIRST TIME SINCE DECEMBER. Instead, I just returned to bed, and didn’t get up until… well, some considerable time later. I wish I could hibernate for the winter, like a little animal. It seems to be my natural inclination at this time of year.

In slightly better news, when I did finally wake up, it was to the sound of the postman bringing me my new shoes:

Yes, they still have the label on the sole, because I was too lazy/lurgy-filled to remove it. I probbaly won’t be able to wear them until about May, though, so that’ll give me time to painstakinginly pick it off, cursing and whining as I do so. (Why must they stick horrible labels on the soles of my shoes, WHY?)

Is it nearly Spring yet?

Well, it’s January 7th, and I’m just going to hold my hands up here and admit that I haven’t left the house for five days now. Other than to take this photo, that is:

Obligatory "Look, I am standing in snow!" photo

Did you know it’s been SNOWING here in the UK, readers? Ha! What am I saying? Of COURSE you knew! Because for the past few weeks, there’s been only one topic of conversation amongst us Brits. Can you guess what it is? Yes? It’s SNOW! Someone please shoot me…

It started snowing while Terry and I were on holiday. That’s almost four weeks ago now, for those of you playing along at home. It basically hasn’t stopped since, which is actually pretty unusual for this part of the world. Sure, it’s always cold (and I DO mean “always”), but snow is quite rare, and when it does fall, it’s normally gone within a day or two, much to my joy. This time, though? This time it decided to stick around, see in the New Year with us, maybe try and ruin Christmas… stupid old SNOW.

When our flight landed at Glasgow airport, there wasn’t much snow in evidence. “Ha!” we thought. “We have missed the worst of it! Media was exaggerating! Parents were exaggerating! Airline which kept us stranded for 17 hours was exaggerating!” Then we drove into our street, and straight into a huge pile of SNOW, which we remained stuck in for the next 30 minutes, until our kind neighbour finally took pity on us and came to dig us out. Which just goes to show what WE knew, eh?

Two days later, we pulled out of the driveway to head to my parents’ house for Christmas, and instantly got stuck in the SNOW. Our neighbour helped push us out. Then we drove to my parents’ house and got stuck in THEIR driveway My dad helped push us out. Then? We drove home. And got stuck in our driveway. Our neighbour…actually, you know what? Just fill in the rest of this yourself, OK?  My point is: it’s not been much fun. Because this country isn’t really used to prolonged periods of heavy snow, we just aren’t prepared for it. Like, AT ALL. This means that our street still hasn’t been cleared since that initial snowfall while we were away. A couple of feet of snow has now turned into solid ice, and is absolutely treacherous to walk on. So we…. haven’t been. Walking, that is. We’ve not been having our rubbish bins emptied either, because the council (Who’ve failed to clear the road) now say they can’t access the street. One bin WAS finally emptied today, but the other’s getting on for four weeks now, and, you know, that’s not much fun, especially not over Christmas.

The upshot of all of this is that we’re currently more or less housebound. We CAN leave the house, but it takes such a long time to dig the car out, deal with the horrible conditions on the main roads (lots of abandoned cars lying around because people get stuck and can’t move them) plus the small matter of having to walk on a virtual ice-rink, that it barely seems worth the trouble. Of course, in our case, this isn’t too big a deal, because we’re fortunate enough to be able to work from home (I don’t think I’ve ever been more grateful for that fact than I am this week!), but I really pity the poor people who’re basically having to risk life and limb every morning just to get to work. Did I mention how much I hate the SNOW? And the winter in general? They’re saying it’s the worst winter in 40 years, and it feels a bit like being in an End of the World movie.

My only comfort in all of this is the time I’ve spent planning our next holiday, to somewhere where there is no SNOW. Well, that and my new boots:

My in-laws, meanwhile, travelled home from Greece yesterday. They WERE supposed to be flying from Athens to London Heathrow, and getting a connecting flight to Edinburgh, but the connecting flight was cancelled (due to SNOW), so they had to re-book for another, much later flight, which would have involved an overnight stay at Heathrow. I say WOULD have because unfortunately THAT flight was cancelled too.  Then their flight from Athens to London had to be diverted to….

Glasgow! This was really, really lucky for them, because Glasgow is obviously a whole lot closer to home than London is, but not so lucky for the Londoners, obviously. Remember that Melting Terry predicted last year? I really hope it’s coming soon.

Roll on Springtime…

It hasn’t been a good week for my clothes.  No, I haven’t lost any of them, but…

First of all I managed to dye my running shoes grey. Yes, grey. They WERE a kind of beige colour, but all of that running I’ve been doing recently had turned them the colour of mud, basically, so when I got back from Wednesday’s run, I decided to throw them in the washing machine, so they’d be nice and clean for my planned trip to the gym the next day.

“And I will throw a bunch of BLACK clothes in with them!” I thought. “Because THAT won’t be a disaster at all!”

But of course, it DID turn out to be a disaster. Because the running shoes came out of the machine GREY. And that’s how I came to find myself making the Least Exciting Shoe Purchase in the Whole World Ever:

running shoes, yesterday

(Yes, I have noted the irony of the fact that I replaced my dyed-grey shoes with a pair of naturally grey shoes…)

In fairness, I had been planning to buy new running shoes for a while. It had become clear to me that if I intend to keep up the running, I would need two pairs of trainers, one for the gym and one for running outside. Because the gym will probably throw me out if I keep trailing mud across their nice clean floors, and it’s not exactly practical to keep washing them all the time. (The shoes, that is. Not the floors. I’m definitely not washing the gym’s floors, no way.) So I bought these, put the old trainers back into the machine for another spin (on their own this time), and, of course, they came out looking totally pristine and back to normal, so I really didn’t need the second pair at all, except I totally did. Whew!

Anyway, as I said, when I washed the shoes, I washed a bunch of other stuff at the same time, and one of those things was a black sports top of mine.

And when I tried to iron that black top? I burnt it, so now it has a giant iron-shaped mark, right in the middle of the chest. Excellent!

And when I let out a shriek and ran to switch off the iron, lest I damage something else with it? I caught the leggings I was wearing (for yes, readers I WAS WEARING LEGGINGS AND I DON’T EVEN CARE, SO THERE) on the back of Rubin’s “den”, and I ripped those leggings to shreds. Well, shred.

Total damages for the day: one pair of running shoes (now thankfully restored to working order), one top, one pair of leggings.

Not bad for a day when I only actually left the house once!

A few weeks ago, I was talking to my dad, and my dad said something that really struck a chord with me. It was this:

“Don’t hesitate to buy shoes,” said my dad. “Buy all of them. Especially those ones with the red soles.”

OK, so I’m paraphrasing here. I think he might ACTUALLY have said something about seizing the day, living life to the full, not putting off until tomorrow what you can do today, and all that. And I think the “not putting stuff off” bit might have been in reference to all of the STUFF belonging to me that’s still in my parents attic and my old bedroom.

But I chose to interpret it as “buy shoes”.**

It was my dad’s fault.

Am I grounded?

*Possibly not

** ON SALE, though! SALE.