Christmas shopper

I have bought a new dress to wear for the pantomime at Christmas.

When I say new, obviously I mean that it is new to me, although not exactly new in the strictly unworn-still-has-labels sort of way.

This is because when I looked at new dresses, the ones that I liked all seemed to cost about three hundred quid.

I do not want to look three hundred quid’s worth of beautiful. That is practically setting myself up in competition with Paris Hilton or Kate Middleton.

Mark said that three hundred quid would be all right, because secretly he quite likes the idea of having a trophy wife, but he always says things like that, so I ignored him, and looked on eBay instead.

On eBay there was a very acceptable dress in my size which had been reduced from three hundred quid to forty, just because somebody else had worn it a couple of times. I did not mind about this, because there is a perfectly good dry cleaner in Windermere, so I borrowed Mark’s credit card and bought it.

I know that it is early to be getting ready for Christmas, but it will start to rush up on us at any minute. I would be very pleased if I did not need to think about looking beautiful and could concentrate on making chocolates and mince pies and making sure that we can pay the mortgage in January.

I have got to worry about shoes now, which I have been doing on and off all day. The thing is that I have got enormous hobbit-size flat feet, in consequence of only ever dressing them in flip-flops or boots. Also they have grown some tiresome arthritic knobbly bits, and the result of this is that almost all shoes hurt.

I have never understood exactly why young women purchase footwear which they know perfectly well is going to leave their feet throbbing in agony by the end of the night. Indeed, not many nights pass on the taxi rank when we do not see some poor aspirational beauty limping past, barefoot, with her shoes in her hand. The shoes in question are almost always a cross between sandals and stilts, which I am sure look elegantly lovely, but have nothing else to recommend them.

In fact they don’t even look lovely unless the wearer has spent a very great deal of time practising the complicated skill of walking in them. Few things are less beautiful than the sort of knock-kneed hobble, in skin-tight skirt and six-inch heels, which means you have to stick your bottom out and stagger along with bent knees in order to keep up with your carelessly striding boyfriend ten yards in front.

This is one of the things that makes Mark cross. He thinks that you ought not to  go out with a girl who is dressed like Princess Barbie unless you have thought about it first and organised taxis for any journey longer than a hundred yards, and are prepared to walk really slowly with her leaning on your arm for the other bits. He sometimes says this to oblivious young men when they get into his taxi.

Even with that sympathetic point of view I still do not want to squish my summer-splayed hooves into downhill-facing instruments of too-tight torture, and have spent every between-customer moment this evening, looking anxiously at the mighty Internet for inspiration.

So far I have had no success.

There was a pair that I really liked, but they were a hundred and sixty nine quid.

That is eighty four pounds fifty each. I think that is more money than  want to spend on my feet.

EBay here I come…