Archive | December, 2009

Christmas Top 5

24 Dec

Mary and Jesus (Raphael's Madonna dell Granduca)My personal selection of the best bits of Christmas.  A couple of deliberate omissions: the incarnation of Jesus, but that is Christmas, rather than being a good thing about Christmas.  And snow, because while snow is great it more often than not comes separately from Christmas.

So, here we go, in no special order:

1) Tinsel  I love the sparkliness of tinsel, especially in low light, the softness of it when you run it through your fingers, and the smell when you take it out of the box from last year.  Nothing else smells like tinsel, and tinsel smells of Christmas!

2) Christmas Food – and far too much of it, usually, but it’s great to have an excuse to eat lovely scrummy fattening food like chocolate logs and roast potatoes.  And sherry is a funny one.  I would never drink it at any other time of year, but somehow at Christmas it’s just right.

3) Carols I wait every year for the carols to start!  I love singing them in parts or hearing them sung in parts, I love caroling out in the cold and warm, crowded, candlelit carol services.  I love the words and even the silly bits you know aren’t accurate, like the fact that “snow had fallen, snow on snow”.  Poetic licence is just fine at Christmas.

4) Presents Not just receiving (although that’s good) but giving them too.  When you’ve paid attention and you get it right, the look on people’s faces is brilliant.  And wrapping presents is fun, and so is tearing off the wrapping.  And then using all your new things as soon as possible.  Generally good in every way.

5) Christmas Spirit – by which I mean people being nice to each other.  It’s not just a myth, people really are kinder at Christmas (although it tends to be towards strangers rather than family!).  Strangers smile at each other, wish each other well and help each other out when they are in need, and there is generally a good deal more peace on earth and goodwill towards men.

None of your bah humbug here!

Shoe Envy

2 Dec

I have said before that I don’t understand most women’s fascination with handbags.  Shoes, however, are a different matter.  I can be quite illogical about shoes.  Yes, I don’t understand the appeal of Jimmy Choos and Manolo Blahnicks (nasty clunky looking things) and yes, I have my sensible pairs of Clarks (they don’t leak), but I also have ridiculous strappy, high heeled confections of joy not because they are comfortable (some of them I can barely walk in) or waterproof (far from it) but because they are beautiful.

When I was at Uni I had a pair of black high-heeled sandals (as they are called, although they’ll never see a beach) which had a network of narrow, overlapping black straps, a four inch heel and not much else.  I called them my suicide shoes.  I wore them to the hall ball one night – six hours in those shoes and I couldn’t feel my feet for two days afterwards.  But it was worth it because they were so beautiful.  And not just the shoes themselves, but in really lovely shoes your feet are transformed into things of beauty too.

The latest episode of my relationship with shoes has been my search for the perfect pair of high heeled long boots.  They are in fashion at the moment, but in some ways that doesn’t help because a) there’s too much choice, too many places to look and b) the ones that are in fashion are generally either slouch style and too short, or over the knee (yikes!) or have so many buckles you’ll probably fasten your legs together as you walk.

I finally found a pair after much searching – heel not too high, not too flat, colour right (has to be black), only a small, unthreatening amount of buckles, and, for a miracle, the right length on the leg, too.  Then, the day after I found them, I suffered an unexpected attack of shoe envy when the boss at work walked in with a better pair!  Horror!  Of course, her budget is less limited than mine, but it leached all the joy out of my acquisition.  At least until I saw them the next day from another angle and they made her look like Rudolph Hess.  Phew!  My boots are perfect again.

One thing that is annoying about shoes, though, is that you have to put up with whatever height of heel the manufacturer sees fit to give you.  If you love the shoes and they have four inch heels, tough – you will have to get used to pain.  If you love them and the heel isn’t long enough to keep your trousers off the floor, again, tough – you’ll have to learn to sew hems.  Surely there is a market for shoes, not just in different sizes, but also different heel heights?  An idea for any entrepreneur ready to brave the (never-ending?) credit crunch.

 

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