At last night's magazine launch, I noticed my shoes and those of the other men there. They were not similar in style. Yes, there was some common ground; all had soles and were dark in colour. Theirs and mine were laced and low-heeled, but there was a significant difference in...length. Mine were 'standard', what I regard as an 'ordinary' shoe. The shoes of the men who stood around in small groups, talking earnestly to what seemed like, but couldn't have been, a token young woman in each cluster, were long and pointy. What were their shoes saying to me, I pondered, as I nibbled on my cheese and cracker? Was this another manifestation of the short-necktie, long-necktie situation? Was my lack of career ambition being broadcast by my shoes and their hunger for success by theirs? I fell, at that point of my rumination, into conversation with a very ambitious young architect whose extraordinarily graceful buildings, at least those he's been party to designing, are gracing the sky-lines of a Chinese city whose name I've forgotten, and haven't thought about it again til now. Thinking back, I realise I didn't check his shoes out. They may have been stubby, they may have been lengthy, I can't rightly say. In any case, I was reminded of winklepickers and milkbars and, inscrutably perhaps, the Black Orchid. The sushi, btw, was very nice indeed and the article I wrote for the magazine and the way it was presented, very pleasing.
6 comments:
I've always thought winklepickers were 'art school' rather than ambitious business type. I love the look of pointy toed shoes and once spent a year as a uni tutor standing up most of the day in gorgeous pointy stilettos, probably why I now visit a podiatrist. I spent most of today in gumboots.
You're so perceptive, corokia green - these blokes were indeed from that stable.Were your stilettos 'Dorothy red' and covered with gold spangles and did you ever click their heels together and say...
Not red and spangly, they were black, 80s Dunedin we didn't do colour (occasional exception made for purple)
More likely RG, is the timing of the shoe purchase. Recent fashions have said that 'winklies' are 'in'.
Was on a building site is Aussie many years ago and a Maori guy used to have everyone in fits with his Maori descriptions of everything. His favourite footwear was his Maori safety boots. For the rest of us they were jandals. People would ask him what he did and he would say, spent "the day making rocking horse sh#t". Took me a day or two to work out that was sawdust.
Ha! That's like 'Smurf-poo' (Blutack).
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