Supposedly, Marilyn Monroe said, “Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world.”

I’m inclined to agree with that. Up to about ten years ago, my shoes were vertiginous, multitudinous and splendorous. Seriously, I used to store most of them at work in a cupboard that was supposed to be dedicated to files (no guesses why my team was the first one to go paperless!).

But then my back started to give out. And then I tore my hip flexors twice. And then my spine started leaking fluid. And I wasn’t working in a fancy office any more, I was mostly working on a laptop from my fancy living room. So the fanciful shoes went, slowly but surely. They were replaced by many Converse variants (good for the school run), and wellies, and ankle boots with good arch support.

Approaching almost-forty, I don’t know if conquering the world is still on the menu (it sounds like a lot of work), but DD keeps ‘borrowing’ my shoes (permanently), which makes me think that perhaps it’s not the shoes, but the attitude with which you wear ’em.