One Dancing Non-Princess

Peanutbutter and jam on yummy baguette.

I always loved the story of the twelve dancing princesses when I was little. It wasn't the neatness of the union with the twelve prancing princes that did it (I feel sure the version we had when small didn't see the eldest married off to some hoary old stalkerish pervert: if it did, I have firmly blocked it out). And certainly it wasn't the princess element that resonated: tombstone-toothed little girls with tangled curly hair seldom identified as princesses, in my experience at least. Instead, it was the enchanted forests and tattered shoes that captured my imagination: the branches broken from magical trees, the invisible cloak, midnight boat rides, the dancing 'til dawn.

I have always walked through my shoes at a rate of knots, scuffing them almost at once, prone as I was (am) to ambush by paving stones (and the ire of parents -- Startrite shoes in width and length  measurements did not come cheap).  However hard I tried (try), my shoes seemed (seem) always more battered than anyone else's. That the state of my shoes could be down to more than just clumsiness was (is) an appealing prospect: if my poor scuffed shoes could talk, what stories would they tell of my nocturnal adventures...

Something Afoot

Banana; a raspberry bun; boiled egg on toast;
doppelgänger shreddies (the astute amongst you
 will notice a breakfast is missing;
it was a fishcake with a poached egg & hollandaise

Either shoes are getting bigger, or my feet are getting smaller. Time was, I was a dependable size 6. These days, a 6 is like wearing a pair of clown shoes, and a 5 is just that little bit too small -- length-wise at least. (Britons, by and large seem to be a spade-footed, short-legged species, and I've yet to find a pair of shoes that didn't slop off my heels, and a pair of trousers that didn't need letting down.)

It's an odd position to find myself in: almost-dainty-footed-ness. I've always thought of my feet as somewhat flipper like. Perhaps because growing up my father always told me I had hands like feet and feet like fenders, oh and tombstones rather than teeth. I've long considered my extremities rather outsized for my height -- all legs and arms and fingers and toes and not a great deal of torso -- or head, as it happens (I once borrowed a five-year-old cousin's bicycle helmet; I was not five at the time. More like 25.).

I feel like I've wandered into an odd kind of a fairy tale, and I can't yet tell if I'm the heroine, or just a vanishing-footed curiosity along the way...

Breakfast the One-Hundred-and-Seventy-First

Honey Nut Cornflakes and nectarine.

My legs feel like they are going to drop off. I think I walked about 6 miles today.

On my travels I went to the cobbler and he worked magic on the worn down heels of my shoes.

When I lived in France, a cobbler actually rejected my shoes. They were so far gone that there was nothing to be done. (As I recall, there wasn't enough toe left to stitch onto a sole).

The rate at which I wear through shoes often makes me feel like one of the Twelve Dancing Princesses. Although with significantly fewer natty shoes and much less twinkly toes.