I can't think of a title for this..

It's been a good week, this week, even if I have had a bit of a cold. Not surprising really considering it's done nothing but rain since I got here, and I then discovered I've not really the amount of shoe-age that I should have to withstand this amount of rain. This called for shoe shopping, one of my least favourite activities - I know, I know, as a woman it's letting the side down to complain about it, but if you had feet like mine, you'd hate it too.
Firstly my feet are quite small - I can get into a size 5 at a push, but 5.5, to 6 for comfort lengthwise, the width, well I'm quite large, and the old feet have spread a bit to provide me with a firm plant. The real problem is one I inherited from Dad, high insteps. Hugely high insteps since I did ballet as a kid and ever since have been curling my feet into perfect points. It's led to the development of a pair of extraordinary insteps, even if my feet have remained flexible and bunion-less during my adult life! Finding a shoe that fits this remarkable foot has become the bane of my life - I've been everywhere, I've bought on-line, I've been to the Shoe Tailor and yes, they make shoes that fit, shoes I even like, and shoes I think are a reasonable price, but are they good quality shoes? They are not. The only pair I bought were fine to start out with by by the time the uppers became really comfortable to wear, the soles had collapsed and you could see they were constructed on a sort of honeycomb cell construction - once the sole under the foot had gone, it then tried to force the sole of my foot into a network of about six square pieces! Nothing to be done with that except throw them away, and think, well I won't bother with them again. I mean you are talking £40 odd quid a pair.
That's the other thing about shoes that I really dislike, it's the cost of them. Yes, I accept you have to pay for a decent pair of shoes, but I remember paying £20 quid back in the seventies and so on, and I really really resent having to pay over say £35 for a pair. But this is what being old is all about really, it's moaning about the cost of things and how it's changed over the years.

Yes well, old is what I am now - birthday this week too. I was very chuffed with the cards and so on that I got from the family and friends. I even got a card signed by all of the people I used to work with back in Bristol, which really did chuff me no end. It's funny how you can work with people for years, really think that you're quite good friends with them and then you move on to another job and you never hear from these people again. Over the years this has happened to me, although I have to say I also had greetings from women I worked with over twenty years ago way back in the dawn of time at the Theatre in Bath. So I count myself very lucky that over the years I've worked with some great people, and I was very touched by firstly the card that turned up from Bristol, and then the texts I had from Sonia & Vanessa in Bath. Well, Brittany actually, because that's where one of them came from!
In the evening I went out for a meal, with some local friends. We went to a bistro type place on Duke Street called Tibo's, very nice it was too, particularly the starter - whisky cured salmon, fabulous. I can't tell you how pretty this was on the plate, and how delicious it was to eat! I followed this with a lamb tagine, but I have to admit that here I came a cropper with an excess of aubergine, which is not my fave veg. But the lamb was wonderful, melt in the mouth type lamb. A nice touch was that the menu listed their fish and meat suppliers, all local, which I thought was a really good idea. All restaurants should do that.
Anyhow to bring us back full circle, I did get new shoes, three pairs in fact. Well I'm a big believer that when you find some that fit, buy in bulk!