Hooker Shoes

Karen arrived home from work last night displaying that weird duality of emotion that all women generate when they have been on a lunch time shopping spree... slight guilt and embarrassment at having flayed the credit card to within an inch of its limit and extreme pride in her capacity for good taste and expert consumerist tuition. This is best summed up by the phrase “yes I’ve spent money that I probably shouldn’t have - but I got some real bargains.”

Now, before I risk a night on the sofa with only my big mouth for company, I probably ought to point out that actually Karen barely spent £50 (correct me if I’m wrong) therefore the credit card was hardly driven to breaking point and (most incriminating of all) I’m just as prone to flogging the plastic during a lunch break shopping frenzy and exhibiting the exact same ambivalence when I get home and realize I have to fess up about it.

Big up for equality and all that.

Anyway, Alvin Hall style financial debates aside, Karen’s big moment last night among the intimate pageantry of our domestic catwalk was the unveiling of The Red Shoes...

Now red shoes are a new departure for Karen who usually favours black or brown boots (the foot fetishists among you no doubt have ears eagerly pricked up at this point... or something at any rate) always being mindful of wanting to appear fashionable whilst maintaining an all-over-air of consummate professionalism. I say this not just to flatter my wife into allowing me to sleep inside the house tonight but so that you can appreciate just how surprised I was at being presented with a pair of insurmountably red high heeled shoes yesterday.

I’m hoping it’ll also explain why the first phrase out of my mouth was: “Wow, they look like hooker shoes”.

Yes. I know. If ever a man was rendered transparent by the things he says...

Knowing full well how the male mind works (which isn’t that well at all) I suppose I shouldn’t have been that surprised by my own ill formed response to the magnificent examples of machine stitched foot wear that Karen was waggling before me... but what did surprise me was Karen’s pleasurable reaction. Somehow, although I hadn’t said exactly the right thing I hadn’t said exactly the wrong thing either.

How the hell does that work then? I am really confused.

Hmm. Maybe the threat of me sleeping on the sofa this week wasn’t as real as I thought...