If the shoe fits...

I spent Saturday morning shopping in Cloisterham.  (Not the cathedral city Dickens called by that name.  Another one.)  Proper shopping, not window shopping, because this time I had a decent excuse.  The recent inclement weather revealed that I had worn a hole in the sole of my plimsoll, which became irredeemably manky soon afterwards.  And so off I went on my mission to buy new plimsolls.  I came back with caramel leather high heels with ribbon ties.

And this set me thinking about the link between shoes and fairy tales.  There is something about a rack of right-footed shoes that compels me to try them on.  Perhaps on some level their cry to be reunited with their left-footed partner draws me close.  Or perhaps it's just that I've no self-control.  But there is something very Cinderella about shoe shops.  The solitary shoe looking for its other half.  The promise of transformation into someone else.  The chance to swap everydayness for impossible glamour.  The potential for disaster (in the form of a badly twisted ankle, rather than discovery by the wicked stepmother).  The potential to attract Prince Charming.

Do shoe shops set out deliberately to tap into this folk memory or is it just a coincidence that, for so many women, new shoes mean a new you?

So now I have my beribboned heels, the accoutrements of a glamorous author (you know I wasn't going to manage a whole post without plugging the book).  All I've got to do now is walk the walk.

And to do that without falling over I really must buy some new plimsolls...

Buttons? What buttons?

No, not those sort of buttons.  This has nothing to do with haberdashery or electronics, or even bellies.  But it has everything to do with Cinderella.

Have you ever wondered if Prince Charming is really the man for you after all?  Perhaps you just want someone kind, gentle and caring.  Someone who'll unblock your drain or jumpstart you car in the snow, someone who's seen you with no make-up and a temperature of a hundred and three and still won't run away.  Someone who's not rich, not flashy, not necessarily drop-dead gorgeous, but always one hundred per cent real.

Maybe you should be Looking For Buttons.

Looking For Buttons - a comedy for the romantically hopeless.  A new novel for 2011.