63. These shoes were made for walkin ...

I’ve have become a shoe stalker, a foot fetishist.  Dawn is the spotter, and I keep a keen eye for carabinieri thinking I'm a freak.  

If the shoe fits ....

I’ve been taking photos of shoes. I’ve never seen shoes like this in my life.  They are the highest and sharpest and sexiest things on earth.  They carry their owner to her destination, no matter the pain.  Watching feet in these shoes, you expect pools of blood under the soles. You expect the toenails to turn black, the ankles to be in casts. A look of extreme agony on their perfect faces.  You expect the owners to trip, or stumble, or tremble.  But no, these shoe wearers could happily audition for tight rope walking between hot air balloons.

You can always spot a tourist. First, because they are wearing comfortable shoes, and staring with horror at the Venetian form of footwear. Second, because the Venetians wouldn’t even look at a shoe that wasn’t a Magli, or Cavelli, or Choo and wasn’t the most expensive accessory in a woman’s wardrobe.

The first point of interest for a Venetian is always someone’s shoes. There are more shoe shops here than gondoliers. I would imagine that women could walk naked in the lanes and be accepted if their shoes made the grade.  There is no consideration for bone damage, spinal injuries, or shape of leg. The higher the better. Wedges, points, straps, glitter, diamante, diamonds; coloured soles, black soles, suede, and always, always polished to a mirror shine or buffed to velvet.  And they’ve developed a walk to go with it - a sort of swing, and a catwalk stride and a knowledge of the cobbled terrain.

Mirella was markedly distressed when I tried to wear my croc thongs on the bus as I’d be standing, even though I had a new pair of shoes she’d approved in my new bag she’d approved. Bunions?  So?  Neuroma? Ha! You think you’re the only one?  Callouses? When your feet bleed I will take your complaints seriously - even then, keep quiet until you get home and soak them in Alka Seltzer, but just don’t tell anyone. This all said under her discrete breath, but the Mamma Mia gave away her sentiments about my footwear.

On various evenings when I’ve returned home in agony after bus strikes, long waits and circumnavigating the globe like Marco Polo trying to find one little street not market on the map, I’ve tried to explain my distress.  Translated, I’ve told Mirella that my feet were rocks, depressed, melodramatic, bread, tragic, crying, unhappy and dead.  Incidentally, I’ve also tried to dry myself with a baby, needed more cheese for my piano, put shoes around my neck and a scarf on my praying feet, asked her to open the first, tried to trundle the tram with her shopping back home, asked where I could hang my dripping lavender, had my hat cut and folded my hair in my bag. 

Mirella took me firmly by my arm and escorted me into a shoe shop the way she would have taken her son to the orthodontist.  Fix this, she commanded, shuddering as she pointed to my slush puppies, worn since Nepal, and quite the worse for wear. The shoe assistant had to restrain herself from finding some rubber gloves, and a face mask, and brought out a succession of dangerous, tarty, inadequate, reckless shoes so that I could at least do the passegiata with Mirella later that day.  The passegiata is what is sounds like - ostensibly a social walk with friends, but it’s a dance of display of fashion, endurance and style. 

Each shoe that I rejected elicited another sniff of derision from both Mirella and the assistant, although they were both trying desperately to be firstly sympathetic to my tortured pedicles, then decided to revamp my pedestrian affiliations with due haste. I love Mirella, she's wonderful and warm, and I've adopted her as my auntie as well, and we've had the best of laughs this week over my language manglings.  But she would not get on that bus with me unless my feet were suitably attired. 

I had the new dress, the hat, the matching sunglasses.  I had to have sandals to match the lot, and they both relaxed with mutual looks of relief when I finally managed to find a pair that didn't give me a thrombosis.

But to their horror, I put them in my bag. How, I reasoned, could I be expected to spend the whole day wearing NEW shoes? How could you not? was the astounded response. Do you think we wear Old Shoes ANYWHERE?

In Venice, I bought a pair of beautiful Red Leather Shoes.  I wore them immediately.  I had redeemed my relationship with Mirella.  She took me by the arm and we walked happily through Venice for the rest of the day.

When Giorgio met us at the bridge, the first thing he said was "AH! Bella Rossa Scarpe!"  Great red shoes!