A LIFE IN SHOES

About a zillion years ago, one of my favourite bloggers, Christina at Fashion's Most Wanted, tagged me in a shoe meme. It's taken me such a shamefully long time to pick up the baton, I can't actually remember the rules of the meme, other than one had to post pictures of one's favourite shoes. 


This weekend, however, Mr Trefusis made me sort out my shoe cupboard, and I finally got round to taking some (rather bad) pictures. Like all women I have far too many shoes, yet end up wearing only three pairs, and those are either too worn or too boring to show here. My favourite shoes should really go in the bin - they're completely knackered but they're chocolate brown stilettos, with a very pointy Blahnik-style toe and schiaparelli pink detail and I completely love them.

These are Prada: Black kid with a natural coloured lizardskin and silver piping. Sadly, like their owner , they're getting on a bit and are a little tired and worn.  Nevertheless, every time I slide my feet into them, I feel like Zelda Fitzgerald - without the dodgy alcoholism and mental issues, obviously - but in a jazz age kind of way that makes me want to perch elegantly on a bar stool and knock back a couple of Sidecars.

These are also Prada: fabric with ostrich: I fell in love with the print and the bright turquoise toes and heels. Like all Prada shoes they're very comfortable, but they're a little too distinctive to wear often and so, despite being ten years old, they're still in quite good nick.

Bottega Veneta and my most bargainacious shoes ever: they were twenty-five pounds reduced from £250, presumably because there was no call for orange shoes in London 12 years ago when I bought them. Twenty five pounds. More than anything else, they make me feel like Summer's finally arrived: I like to wear them with a pink linen shift dress and with watermelon pink varnish on my toes.

These are Kurt Geiger - satin with swarovski crystal studded heels and cripplingly uncomfortable - taxi shoes if ever there were any. They also upstage me terribly so, fabulous as they are, I've worn them about twice - once to a Harper's Bazaar party where I had to take paracetamol to be able to keep them on, and then once to a dinner party where I knew I'd be sitting down all the time. Are these what magazines call a statement shoe?

'No one would ever mistake you for my mistress in those shoes,' said Mr Trefusis, rather unflatteringly. I don't for one minute suspect him of having a mistress, but I do know what he means: you'd never slap a super-injunction on someone in Ferragamos.  However, what they lack in vampiness, they make up for in sophistication and I love them passionately not least because they remind me of my honorary grandmother, who had immense style, and swore by cashmere jumpers, linen sheets and Ferragamos with every outfit. 

I couldn't work out why these were the only flat shoes in the shoe cupboard - surely I must have other flats, I thought, casting around for evidence. I found a pair of Converse, a couple of pair of really beaten up ballet flats and (the shame) a pair of frog green Crocs: I seem only to wear flats to get from A to B, and then whip out the heels. I must have a terrible complex about being short, or maybe it's that unconsciously I think it's only worth spanking serious shoe money on what the Tiniest Trefusis calls 'heel-high shoes'. However, these glamorous gold Prada flats make me feel a bit Jacqueline Onassis. Is it just me, or do shoes have a transformative power for every woman? Is it the Cinderella thing all over again?

I couldn't photograph these to save my life - they're purple satin and very high and I wore them when I married Mr Trefusis, but that's another story for another time. They're Kurt Geiger.

My favourite shoes don't belong to me at all - the Tiniest Trefusis wore these silver Kicker boots not long after she first learned to walk.  She's very much her mother's daughter - the first word she ever said was 'Shoe'.  

PANTOUFLE EN VAIR

What is it that's so alluring about a high-heeled shoe? I'm particularly drawn to those with viciously pointed toes, and a sharp heel, so much so that I can empathise enormously with the step-sisters in Grimm's variant of Cinderella, Aschenputtel. It's a rather harsher, more visceral version of the tale than Perrault's, or Disney's, but in all the stories, the Prince identifies his future bride by means of a shoe (because, of course, just remembering her face would be too much of an effort, right?). Anyway, in Grimms story, when the Prince announces that whoever fits the 'small and slender' golden slipper will be his bride...

...Then the two sisters were very glad, because they had pretty feet. The eldest went to her room to try on the shoe, and her mother stood by. But she could not get her great toe into it, for the shoe was too small; then her mother handed her a knife, and said, “Cut the toe off, for when you are queen you will never have to go on foot.” So the girl cut her toe off, squeezed her foot into the shoe, concealed the pain, and went down to the prince.

Whenever I read Aschenputtel, I'm reminded that it doesn't take a handsome prince to make a woman go through this kind of pain these days - fashion alone will do it: seemingly we're all penitents on a fashion pilgrimage, offering up our suffering as sacrifice. I've spent many happy minutes playing hookey in the fashion cupboard at work, trying on the dozens of glorious shoes that come in to be photographed for the magazine, each more exquisitely agonising than the last. I remember a pair of cranberry coloured glacé kid Louboutins which were so high they immediately hurt my knees, so heaven only knows what they'd be like after an hour, and a mouthwatering pair of Yves Saint Laurent Tribtoo shoes with a skyscraper of a platform and a needle heel that just screamed 'broken ankle'. My own shoe cupboard is full of beautiful high heels - and there are a fair few that could really do with me amputating a toe or slicing off a heel to make them anything like wearable.

There was a time when I didn't care about the fact most of my shoes made me feel as if I were walking on sharp swords like the Little Mermaid. The loveliness of them far outweighed their purpose and made walking to the end of the office without wincing seem like an indulgence. Part of me still feels that way, and now I've put Party Feet in every pair I own, and have reined in some of my ambition when it comes to heel height, I still like to sit and admire my feet in a nice pair of Ferragamos or Louboutins or even in the petrol blue Kurt Geiger shoeboots I'm wearing today.

However, the weather and the recession have instigated a recent change in Trefusis footwear policy: when I started this blog, it read 'Mrs Trefusis Takes a Taxi...because she eschews sensible shoes'. Well, um, what can I say - for the sake of veracity, I've had to remove that promise. I no longer eschew the sensible or the comfortable. Partly it's because taxis have become something of a luxury rather than a necessity - and let me tell you, I'm absolutely delighted to have discovered the bus; nearly as good as a taxi in Central London and only £1.20 a journey with an Oyster Card. Really, too marvellous. But mostly it's because that when it's wet or snowy or icy underfoot, heels just don't cut it. It's not simply that I don't want to wreck something that costs more money than I could ever admit to Mr Trefusis, it's that I'd rather remain on terra firma. I'm afraid I bought UGGS. God knows, I swore I never would, but I can't tell you the loveliness of always having warm and cosy feet, being able to walk fast - especially if I can see the right bus is coming - and of having toes and heels and insteps that no longer beg for mercy. I do call them Ugh's, because no one can deny they're works of infernal hideousness, but I'm definitely prepared to sacrifice style for comfort - at least out of doors.

But perhaps I haven't strayed that far from the Cinderella myth: according to Wikipedia, in Perrault's version, Cinderella wore fur boots - 'pantoufle en vair' - but when the story was translated from the French, vair was mistaken for verre (glass). So Cinderella was, at least in one account, a sensible girl too - and right now, in snow-bound Britain, a fur boot trumps a glass slipper, prince or no prince.

THE FUTILITY SCHEME

As the recession bites, the cogs in the corporate machine bite harder. One spends ever longer slaving over a hot spreadsheet, trying to create magic formulae that will stop the numbers leaking off the page. Incessant demands rain down from on high for yet more strategies and even cleverer ideas. Vast swathes of time are laid waste sitting writing reports on what one would be doing if only one wasn't forced to sit and write a report about it.

And now that the series of measures designed to reduce the cost base has been implemented, one has even more work, because there are fewer people around to help you do it. Broadly speaking, one has to work triply hard to stay standing still, and I like nothing more than being left alone to make use of the idle minute.

So when another meeting is scheduled in the boardroom to discuss trading - or to 'share ideas' - my heart sinks even lower in my Pedro Garcia shboots. Two hours carved out of my day, sitting round an enormous table drinking bad coffee is its own particular kind of hell.

I've long since given up wondering if these Kafkaesque examples of corporate comradeship were secretly scripted by Martin Lukes, as colleagues discuss amiably whether they have the required bandwidth [tr: enough people ] or if something's actionable [tr: we can get on with trying to sort it out, as opposed to get the lawyers involved], or suggest escalating an issue. I spent a lot of time drawing confused doodles in my Smythson notebook before I realised this had nothing to do with making things worse, but simply meant it should be pushed upstairs for someone higher in the food chain to deal with. One is tempted to feed in bonkers stuff, exhorting people to 'get the potato on the fork', though in this environment the response would no doubt be that they were following Atkins.

In truth, meetings here are - management-speak aside - remarkable for the rational, open, professional and timely way in which they're conducted, with plenty of emphasis on debate and frank discussion.

But lately, and particularly in the wake of the recent issues, the tenor of these meetings has changed. People no longer speak out, or up. There is no more debate, or disagreement, or sticking of the head above the parapet. There's a new meekness, a subservience, an interest in toeing the party line. But what was more astonishing than anything was the dramatic sartorial shift: at least three-quarters of the attendees were wearing suits. This is a magazine company, not the civil service: employees are used to expressing themselves through their clothes and having the freedom to wear what they want when they want, whether it's 'trying incredibly hard' high fashion or dress-down friday chino-chic. The lines between 'home' clothes and 'work' clothes had become eroded over the last 15 odd years to the point where people no longer had a work uniform. Jeans were commonplace - albeit those with a hefty price tag, and worn with fabulous shoes.

And yet, overnight, the dress code has changed, reflecting a new, cautious, serious mood.

It's not just here, it's all over town - reports suggest that even at the top end, bespoke tailoring has never been more in demand: it's one of the few fashion categories that's in double digit growth. When you're a hedge fund manager and your fund is making pots of money for the client, no one cares if you're dressed in Havaianas and a pair of cut off denim shorts. But now things are tighter, and people more risk averse, it seems only the seriousness of a made to measure suit will do to convey the seriousness with which you take the guardianship of your client's money.

It's as if some new sumptuary law has been put in place: the economy and people's uncertainty about their jobs has rendered decoration, individuality and flair in poor taste. Clothes are cut along austerity lines, in sober neutrals. Waists are nipped in. Fabric used with a parsimony not seen since Molyneux, Worth, Amies and the rest of the Incorporated Society of Fashion Designer united in 1941 to create thirty-four utility clothing designs, with the CC41 label (Civilian Clothing 1941) sewn inside.

In 1942, the British government issued the Civilian Clothing Order, which made illegal the decorating of clothing with additional buttons, embroidery, extravagant cuffs or other frills and furbellows.

But in 2009, it seems we are more self-regulating. And it's not merely 'street-fashion', a trend coming consumer up rather than designer down: the key looks on the A/W 09 ready to wear runways also had strong tones of tailored austerity chic, and with the exception of the price tag, could have come straight out of the pattern book of those 34 Utility designs.

Prada set the tone with its boiled wool dresses, with slim, belted waists and defined, tailored shoulders.

Even Lanvin took an unusually sotto voce, pared down approach to severe tailoring, albeit one with a defiantly sexy edge

And me? Despite bellyaching about the way meetings appear to be a viable alternative to real work, I'm sure I'll be as suited and booted as the rest of them before the next session in the boardroom comes around.

If you want to be seen to be waging war on economic armageddon, better make sure you're in the right uniform.

MADAME SOSOSTRIS, FAMOUS CLAIRVOYANTE

I don't have a bad cold and nor am I the wisest woman in Europe, but I am considering reviving my sideline in casting horoscopes and reading the Tarot. Or tealeaves, being a very customer-focused kind of person. You name your preferred divination method and I'll try to oblige.

In truth, I'm on the hunt for new money making schemes so I can finance the luxury lifestyle to which I've become accustomed.

Now that the economy has contracted, I can no longer afford those little consolations of Mrs Trefusis. The tiny treats that made life seem so much lovelier are now irritatingly not only way out of reach, but also way down the list after the ghastly dull oven and the just-kill-me-I'm-so-bored-thinking-about-it washing up machine. The sheer enjoyment of looking and feeling good seems to have become the subject of extreme recessionary disapproval. But as we plunge from recession into depression, the economy merely operates as a metaphor for my mood.

I started this blog as an alternative to seeing a wincingly expensive Bond Street psychoanalyist, with the realisation that if the thought of new shoes was infinitely more cheering than having my head-shrunk, I was feeling rather better. To borrow from Linda Grant in The Thoughtful Dresser, "If I were heading into the Great Depression, I wanted to arrive there well-dressed". But now that the world is in economic depression, I can neither afford to be so well-dressed, nor therapy, nor new shoes, nor any of the other bibelots that formed a cossetting palisade between me and the tenebrous, liminal places in my head.

But I am at heart a pragmatist. If I can't learn not to rely on these things to shore me up against my ruin, I will have to find new ways to fund their purchase.

I considered following in the footsteps of the Catholic church and selling saints fingers as relics (as tipped off by Jaywalker, though Cardinal Newman apparently had the last laugh) until it was pointed out to me that this was simony and would result in immediate excommunication followed by hellfire for all eternity. Nice. A little trip back through Dante* reminded me that any experience I had - however distant - of fortune-telling automatically relegated me to Circle 8 along with the simonists anyway, and since the start-up costs of selling 'relics' might require hard cash, my pecuniary interests have led me to reconsider dabbling in a spot of astrometry.

Once upon a time, before the children came along, I wrote horoscopes for a magazine, alongside the usual day job. And having spent several years training with The Company of Astrologers, I'm no end of the pier fortune-teller. I have my credentials, and I'm quite sure that in these uncertain times there's a market for it: I simply need to find my customers.

It might take several horoscope castings to collect enough cash for shoes though I rather think a tarot reading would get me the price of a blow-dry.

I've had a lifelong struggle trying to settle on what Aristotle called The Golden Mean. Will this latest wheeze help turn me into a happy medium?

*take the Dante's Inferno quiz for yourself and find out where you're headed.

ON BEAUTY

I'm in with Preema again so she can check the efficacy of the new super-strength British botox she jabbed into my forehead the other week. Apparently, original Botox isn't up to the job of paralysing my super-strength British muscles, pulsing as they are with the bold, sturdy genes that strode up Everest in a pair of stout boots and a Harris tweed jacket. So she's been experimenting with something so fabulously toxic that normal muscles sink into a sullen torpor at the merest whisper of its name. But my forehead is still putting up an unseemly fight, like some long forgotten SOE operative. She decides I need topping up with even more poison and I swear I hear her hiss 'Resistance is futile' into my brow line as she advances towards my unrepentant wrinkles with an enormous vial and even bigger needle.

Actresses pay Sebagh et al small fortunes for partial paralysis - enough to look young and fabulous under sympathetic lighting, but not so much as would take the Oscar potential out of the performance. I'm too tired to offer up an Oscar worthy anything 24/7. But I do have cogent business and personal reasons why I don't want to show any negative emotion whatsoever. Impassive would do it. Inscrutable would be even better. It worked for Diane de Poitiers, who wielded her power and allegedly maintained youthful good looks by never letting the slightest emotion register on her face. Quite how she did this without the aid of injectables I have no idea. But there's something to be said for the power conferred by an immobile face. The nuclear-powered botox had better be the answer.

All my life I've been cursed with a Roger Moore eyebrow. I don't want to raise one eyebrow quizzically: it's all right for Romantic Heroes and Sir Roger, but on me it not only gives me shocking horizontal forehead lines, it also makes me look at people like I think they're mad. Or stupid. Or worse. At the very least, this involuntary quirk makes me look as if I'm expressing mild disbelief and believe me, in this economic climate it's not good for the Managing Director to think you're questioning a decision. To be fit for business in 2009, one should look like one could achieve the impossible for the ungrateful, single-handedly waging war on recession armed only with a pair of sharpened Rupert Sandersons and a 'can-do' attitude. Exhausting. I can't possibly manage that amount of 'Captain of the Netball team' enthusiasm, and even if I could, my left eyebrow would denounce me, raising itself into my hairline in an unbecomingly cynical manner. All I can manage is to deny readability. We don't realise how much we rely on reading people's faces, until those faces become unreadable. Applause junkies work harder if they're not fed with tacit approval. The inclined to criticise climb down, because you appear unaffected by their judgements. Bad news is received with apparent equanimity. Good news the same.

It's not just in the workplace that showing one's feelings is a hazard. At home my face seems to have set itself in the disagreeable lines of the permanently disgruntled and dissatisfied. Curiously, this isn't a true reflection on the inner workings of my head - fundamentally I'm content - but Mr Trefusis has registered the constant scowl and is disobliged to cajole me out of a black humour, choosing instead to play it back to me with some special features of his own. One of us will have to break out of this mexican stand off and stop glowering and start smouldering instead. Much more fun. And if muscle paralysis is the simplest quick fix and an easy shortcut to rebooting the mood chez Trefusis, sign me up for a lifetime's supply.

It seems that changing the look on my face is the best I can muster right now in the way of managing my world. My first attempt at botox only confirmed to me that a smoother expression begets a smoother life. Pray God I'm not resistant to this variant too.

This is not, then, about the pursuit of youth, but the pursuit of peace: Sanity not vanity.

Dr Preema Vig MBBS MRCGP. Preema@gmail.com. 02079385488

THE UNCONSOLED

No child, nose pressed to the glass of the sweetshop has ever gazed as hungrily as me on one of my regular expeditions to the window of Christian Louboutin's Mount Street store. Today it's different. This time it's no simple pilgrimage, but a desperate cri de coeur. I seek the sole's salvation and heels that heal. It's for exactly this kind of emotional crisis that I've been saving the funds that were otherwise earmarked for the psycho-usurer: seventy pounds a week not spent on solipsistic wailing soon mounts up.

But as I push through the door of retail A & E and into the sumptuous scarlet interior, it's a little like walking through the gates of heaven. Shoe upon shoe -each more exquisite than the last-is displayed in its own spot lit case. In precious metals and skins (alligator, python, sting ray and lizard, lovingly immolated on the altar of mammon) in glassy patent, sequinned, pastel satins, with and without the legendary concealed platform, sling backed, or buckled, in 120cm heels or just 100: every one infinitely desirable, utterly alluring and perfect. I'm hard pushed to remember when I've ever experienced such a rush of desire. Somewhere on these shelves is the reward I've earned for my forbearance over the travails of the last year.

My hand reaches out to caress a few and a flurry of sales girls apparate from nowhere. I sink onto something plushly velvet and boxes of gleamingly extravagant shoes start mounting at my side. I think to myself, "Let the cure begin."

But as I slide my stockinged feet into another pair, and stand to admire the height they give to my instep, the lean tautness lent to my calf and the length to my leg, I have an unexpected pauline moment (though you'd be hard pushed to walk far down the road to Damascus in shoes like these). The scales - possibly from an endangered reptile- fall from my eyes. The thought of new Louboutins has long been an amulet protecting me from the bruise on my soul yet I discover I may no longer need their therapeutic powers. I mentally blink in disbelief. Now I'm finally here, will it really help my psyche to spank 400-odd quid on a pair of shoes?

Is Mr Louboutin's carefully crafted product mere snake-oil? Quite possibly. They won't cure me of what ails me. But finding the strength to extricate myself from their lure just might.

So, the charm of the glossy Louboutin's I've been yearning for suddenly palls. How would it feel if I found a way to repair the Louboutins I already own? Could they, once renewed, offer the consolation I crave? Would re-heeling offer the well-heeled some much needed healing (tee hee)?

I take the opportunity to have a super-clever conversation with myself about object reification. New 'stuff' doesn't actually make you feel better. Ok, so that last bit wasn't very intellectualised, but it's no less true for all that. It seems to me that this 'credit crunch' (god I hate that expression: makes me think of rubbish french apples and their annoyingly insistent seventies ad campaign), anyway, that the economic downturn or whatever we're calling it may well make us reappraise our relationships with what we own, and get us to think about why we all seem to be on a desperate hunt for the new, the latest, the expensive. Self-possession in better than possessions. Not that I love my vast collection of beautiful things any the less, but it does occur to me that I might not actually need to add to it. And not just from the point of view of thrift, either.

So I'm resolved to stop all the mordant longing for things that I don't have, and start appreciating that which is already mine. I'll get the existing Louboutins mended.

But to whom can I entrust this great and significant act of renovation? One of the glossy sales girls gives me a card for the Mayfair Cobbler. I'm not absolutely content with this endorsement, but a corroborating second opinion from the wisely wonderful Frances Wasem at Harper's Bazaar has me at White Horse Street a week later bidding the super-sexy, super-luxe black patent sling backs a teary and fond adieu, with exhortations to the cobbler to treat them with kindness. Spookily he was really unfazed by such madness: perhaps all women with a taste for posh shoes are also quite bonkers?

A week or so later, after a Wolseley breakfast, I make it to the Mayfair Cobbler to pick up my shoes. They're near perfect. Even the worn soles have been slicked scarlet once again. I'm not without some regret for the pair I determined to do without, but I do have a conviction that this was the Right Thing to Do.

And as I write this, and reflect on the inner melancholy that new shoes were supposed to heal, I realise I am neither shoeless, nor melancholic, nor any longer The Unconsoled.

Mayfair Cobbler, 4 White Horse Street London W1J 7LB. 0207 491 3426

HUNT THE SLIPPER

One day I must get over my addiction to lunchtime blowdries- it's hardly pro-credit crunch, and despite giving up Starbucks completely in order to offset the cost (though this was more a strike against American imperialism than an act of financial necessity) I seem to have convinced myself it's necessary to the proper commissioning of my job. After all, I can hardly be expected to function effectively with a 'hair-don't', and I need my self-belief in exactly the right place if I'm to rally the troops and drive us onto greater glory. I'm trying to convince everyone that the current economic climate is just our Agincourt, and not our Battle of Yorktown. I expect Henry V's prototype Purdy was absolutely le dernier cri, A/W 1415 and just the fillip he needed before he cried "once more into the breach dear friends".

But as usual, I digress and it's not the hair that's troubling me as I stare into the full length salon mirror opposite. It's the shoes. More specifically, a pale blue and almost impressively ugly pair of MBT's which look utterly appalling with this season's keynote grey tights and YSL-inspired cinched in peplum jacket over black pencil skirt. This look craves vertiginous heels with cruelly pointed toes: assertive, purposeful, ball-breaker stilettos with a touch of the dominatrix about them. It doesn't work with trainers. How has it come to this? Am I not the last person you'd expect to sacrifice style for comfort? Oh hear ye, all ye style victims: the day of judgement will come when God will punish you for your Vanity. As I am now, so you will be. You knoweth not the time not the hour etc etc etc.

Hmmm. I think we all know it's not God who's doing the punishing here. I am the author of my own discontent, with a big toe joint so agonisingly painful that even I can't feel the pain and do it anyway. I'm now totally over empathising with Cinderella's uglier sister in the terrifyingly grim, Grimm's version: you know the one - the only way the uglier stepsister can jam her foot into the glass slipper is to slice off her toes, and away she goes with the Prince till a bird grasses her up, flying after them tweeting 'tirrou, tirrou, there's blood in the shoe'. Nasty little sneak.

But, obviously, slicing off my toes, whilst tempting, is impractical. So I take myself off to the Royal Ballet's pet podiatrist, figuring he'd understand all about women who uncomplainingly wear crippling shoes for a living.

He looks a bit like a superannuated Patrick Swayze. Maybe an early brush with Dirty Dancing got him into the whole foot business in the first place as he ushers me to his consulting couch at one end of his tiny office and I find myself quietly mumuring, "no one puts Baby in the corner".

Half an hour and £90 later he assures me that the problem has everything to do with the way I walk and nothing to do with my addiction to fabulous shoes. This is cold comfort, since he’s also told me that I have arthritis in my big toe (arthritis? Go directly to smelly Old People’s Home, do not pass Go, do not collect £200), and another unpronounceable issue that he believes is totally curable if I wear custom-made splints on my feet every day and do vast amounts of physio. And yes, I can still wear my more fanciful heels. He says.

However, when I try to jam my feet into my best shoes whilst wearing the splints, I again know exactly how the ugly sisters felt about bloody Cinderella. The splints force my feet into such an anatomically correct position, there isn’t a single beautiful shoe I can cram myself into.

I’m devastated: I feel like the basis of my entire sex appeal has been summarily excised (and am probably still stinging with the granny-implications of the arthritis). Will I be shopping in Clarks from now on? Will Velcro become my fastener of choice? Do I really care about being able to be able to walk without pain? Is there such a thing as a sexy flat shoe?

In the meantime, before I can, ahem, hot foot it to Ferragamo in search of a sexy flat, let’s hope people are distracted by the great hair…

Peter Norman, Podiatrist: The Third Space, London W1 Tel: 0207 439 7332

HAUTE-COIFFURE

I am in Daniel Hersheson having my hair blow-dried for an upscale magazine's awards ceremony. The hairdresser is tattooed from head to toe (only his face is clear, but that too looks threatened by the encroaching cabbalistic whorls, piratical signs, Chinese emblems, and other whatnot). He is also wearing a black leather cap on a shaven skull, an haute-Catholic rosary, the full compliment of facial jewellery and has his jeans underneath his arse in the modern way. He is clearly extremely impressed by himself. But what's even more disconcerting is the way he appears to be drying every hair individually, then when he's about to take the brush out of it, bending down and kissing it.

Is he living in the Shampoo of his own life? Am I supposed to be playing Julie Christie to his brought-up-to-date-for-a-contemporary-audience Warren Beatty? Is this more Blow-up than blow-out? Is this all going to end horribly badly, or could it be the start of a mutually rewarding relationship? I do always slightly regret eschewing the attentions of the wealthy American who took an unhealthy interest in my shoes at the Ritz one evening (but I was in a terrific hurry and didn’t really have the patience to indulge the fetishistic whims of a stranger in the lobby of a hotel, but I have always rather wondered whether it wouldn’t have been a case of fair exchange being no robbery – his slavish devotion to a well-turned ankle and narrow foot, and my penchant for seriously expensive shoes). Putting fantasies of free twice-weekly blow dries – albeit off-beat ones – to one side, I pay his, ahem, styling technique closer examination. I think I’m relieved to discover that he’s actually blowing on it – presumably to cool it down and set the curl. Very strange. Finally, his creative genius exhausted, he brandishes a vast bottle of Elnett, and I’m done.

Mr de Mille, I think I’m ready for my final close-up.

BY BOND STREET TUBE I SAT DOWN AND WEPT

I cried every day for a month. Then only on wednesdays between half past twelve and twenty past one which was rather a waste of the exquisitely painful fee required by the upscale trick cyclist for doing little more than passing me an economy-sized box of own brand tissues. Honestly, at those kind of prices, the very least one could have expected was top of the range Kleenex. A succession of lace-edged lawn squares hand embroidered by beautiful Italian nuns would have been more commensurate with the bill. But not very commensurate with the unbeautiful mascara-smeared snottiness of my tears.


Anyway, after a not very long while I worked out that I could buy a new pair of Louboutins every month for exactly the same money as it was costing me to snivel incoherently and self-pityingly at the head shrinker. And it also occurred to me that if the thought of new shoes was infinitely cheering, then I was probably feeling rather better.

Shoes should always be comforting rather than comfortable. I'd like to think this is the secret etymology of the word 'consoled'. I have been placated by Prada, mollified by Manolos and, once, bright orange Bottega Veneta sandals were just the balm I craved. But in extremis only the mystical properties of Mr Louboutin's red soles will restore one's amour propre.

I have yet to buy the Louboutins. Do I unconsciously anticipate a time when my stiff upper lip will weaken along with my resolve, and my need for consolation will only be assuaged by a trip to Mount Street?