Creature of habit

It might just be a harking back to schooldays – or even earlier – but, to all intents and purposes, I have two pairs of shoes: an outdoor pair and an indoor pair. But today, a special day for reasons I won’t go into, I remembered another pair of shoes. I dusted them down and put them on.

And immediately I began to wonder what it must be like to have different shoes for different days, to be one of those women who love shoes for themselves (the shoeness of them, I mean) rather than as functional things. How their feet must struggle with the relentless unfamiliarity which regularly assaults them.

But my thinking was interrupted – driven off course even – by the need to attend to where this couple of impostors were taking me and by my attempts to educate them in my ways and routines. Until it dawned on me: this was perhaps the point. With every strange pair of shoes comes easy reinvention and a chance to refresh the so-called daily grind.

Perhaps I should don this alien pair on a more regular basis, I thought to myself, clutching at the idea of a carefree, unpredictable me. Damn. That would defeat my purpose. It seems I’ll always be a creature of habit.