The taming of the shoes

I remember when I was a tween I coveted a book called ‘sex tips for girls’ by a female New York jounalist called Cynthia Himel. She trotted around the big apple wearing fantastic leather ensembles with high heels and back combed hair (well it was the 80’s) having all manner of experiences with men and relating them in her weekly columns
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Yes ladies it’s true. Carrie Bradshaw is a weak and fictional copy. This chick was the real deal.

There are many things she wrote that stuck in my mind forever. One great piece of advice was: never wear white tights, EVER. The other was that when a woman wears red shoes something magical happens. So after hankering for a pair of red heels for at least a year, I finally found a pair that I was likely to be able to walk in over Istanbul terrain.
I wore them for the first time today. The first sign that dear Cynthia might be right was when I got out of the taxi and walked to the office. My shoes attracted many a beep from passing motorists. In fact one guy was so busy looking at my shoes he slammed straight into the van in front of him. I kid you not. My shoes caused a pile up on the highway.

In fact the woman at work just laughed at me because she caught me admiring them. Again.

Anyway, in to work I skipped, full of the joys of spring confident in the fact that at the grand old age of 31, I can still stop traffic, well of a fashion.

But apparently the magical effect of my shoes only works within a mile radius of the store where I bought them. Yesterday I paid over the odds, while at the shopping mall, to have some particularly nasty passport photos taken. Like a dumb ass I left them at home this morning and I needed them for work permit purposes.

So rather than waste money on a taxi I decided once again to try the bus to get home at lunch time and pick them up. However there is a magic word which I only just figured out today that they write on the front of buses. I can't pronounce it but it means that wherever you thought you might be going – you are most definitely not. I think its something to do with the evil eye. To cut a long story short, and not for not the first time in Istanbul, I found myself being driven through the Turkish wilderness and ceremoniously dumped at the end of the line (well I presume that's what it was as there were no markings) on the top of a hill so steep that I knew that my shoes would not take me back to civilisation, which was miles away.

A little Turkish boy who got off at the same stop as me was tugging my sleeve with some urgency. I know not why. Then he looked at me sadly and disappeared off into the bush.

So there I was on a windy rain lashed hill. I could tell that I was somewhere near the Black Sea beacause I could see the ships entering the Bospherous. I tried clicking my shoes and saying ‘there’s no place like home’ but it didn’t work. So I tried to walk. When I realised it was futile unless I wanted bunions so I gave up – figuring that a bus would have to come back at some point. Which after a good dose of hypothermia and several nervous cigarettes, it did. Everyone we picked up on the way to our next bit of wilderness wore headscarves. They stared at my shoes, and not in a ‘wonder where she got them’ kind of way. It's amazing how RED shoes can look when everyone else is wearing muted shades of black and grey. Some whispered. My red shoes were beginning to make me feel like a scarlet woman. Which is why when I saw a taxi I started screaming at the bus driver to let me off and was half considering using the emergency hammer to smash the window and escape.

Got back to work 3 hours after I set off. It ahould have been a 20 minute round trip.

Last weekend I went island hoping on the group of islands around istanbul. This weekend more snowboarding!