Shoes

What is it with women and shoes?

Last night, in an attempt to build up a reserve of brownie points (every guy needs a reserve for when you upset the ladies) (It doesn't do any good at all when you're knee-deep in the poo over some careless comment or other, like
"Are you putting on weight dear?"
or
"That colour really doesn't suit you sweetheart, it makes you look like a corpse"
or
"What are you doing with that axe my dear?"

But it makes us feel good for a little while.  Goodness, that must be the most convoluted and parenthesised paragraph I've ever produced.)

However, back to the shoes.

My Beloved (please note that I'm now capitalising Beloved. Post Report Trauma (teacher's joke)) bought a pair of deerskin lace up boots in a fetching pattern of leopard spots.

THEM

I wouldn't wear them for a bet, but my Beloved bought them in a small shoe shop in the Wairarapa.

We had dropped in there for a spot of lunch on a sunny Saturday, and while we were strolling along looking in the shop windows, she spotted the dreaded sign in a shoe shop; 50% SALE.


Recognising the inevitable, I left her to it, and looked at other, more interesting things, like chemist's window displays.

When I was a child, Chemist's Shops (Pharmacies) were mysterious.  Most of them had opaque glass in the bottom half of the window, but the top half always seemed to display very large and ornate bottles of varying sizes, all filled with strongly coloured solutions. God knows what was really in them, but my sadistic old Irish Uncle Bob, told me it was the blood drained from the bodies of naughty children, and that really naughty children had their heads chopped off by the barber (hairdresser for you youngsters) and put in even bigger bottles kept in the chemist's basement.

My Mum must have wondered why I screamed blue bloody murder when ever she tried to take me into a chemists, or why I ran away every time she tried to take me for a haircut.

Then I came across a tool/hardware shop
.

Every bloke I know can spend hours just looking the delights within.
Planes, spokeshaves, drills, grinders, chisels, saws, sharpening stones....the list is endless.  Now we only do this while we're killing time waiting for our dear ladies to finish examining the entire current stock of whatever shop they're demolishing examining at the moment.
We know it's pointless to ask permission to go into the tool shop for a look when the dear lady is with us, because she'll either:

• Give you that absolutely horrible and condescending look which clearly means "You big silly boy, never in a million years do I want to go into that nasty, dirty and smelly hovel, and you should really know better"
• Completely ignore your request and proceed to the next ladies shop.
• Snarl "NO"and pull you away
• Allow you a momentary hope by smiling, then saying "we don't have much time"  This after spending 45 bloody minutes comparing 2 styles of plain white tee-shirts which are absolutely f*cking identical apart from the price and you just KNOW, that she's going to choose the more expensive one.

However I digress.

Returning to the dreaded shoe shop, I entered cautiously.
OH MY GOODNESS.
I was surrounded by women of a certain age.

You lookin' at me Pal?

Why did they look at me as if I was a piece of dog-dropping on the soles of their frighteningly expensive and gloriously uncomfortable shoes?
What had my Beloved been saying about me to these ladies?
Did I really look like a sex maniac serial killer?

I looked at my Beloved.
I looked at the shoes she was wearing.
I did a very silly thing.

I giggled.

I couldn't help it.

It was the shoes.

Who on earth would wear such odd/ugly/sheer bloody stupid looking footwear.

The temperature of the interior dropped by about 50° C.

I could understand the shop assistants being frosty, it was their sale I was threatening, but why were ALL the women giving me those looks.

I did what any red-blooded man would do in this situation.

I ran away.

I smiled at my Beloved.
I smiled at the shop assistants
I smiled in the general direction of everyone else.
I mumbled something like "I'll go and have another pointless 45 minute walk, shall I Dear?"
and left.

She bought the shoes.
She is the proud possessor of the only pair of red deerskin boots stained to look like a Martian Leopard.  And they're hairy. They've still got a little deer fuzz on the surface.
They're creepy.

I don't want to say how much they cost, because I've only stopped crying.  Thank the Good Lord that they were on 50% sale, otherwise I would have to do some explaining to my bank manager.

Wishing to protect my (substantial) investment, I was down in the garage, spraying these clodhoppers with a silicone protectant, so they wouldn't stain or absorb water.

I put them away in the special shoe cupboard, the one built specially by John Browns of Clydeside, the one with the reinforced armourplate shelves for the massive weight of shoes.  How on earth does she need so many.

I've got 7 pairs of shoes.
1 Brown slip-on
1 Brown lacing
1 Black slip-on
1 Black lacing
1 leather trainers
1 walking boots
1 steel toed work boots

My Beloved has 6 shelves in the John Brown special, each of 16 boxes, each with a pair of shoes.

WHY?