NOT NEW YEAR ALREADY!

2013 Suggests 2014 Back Off

My doctor has told me I have suffered a bad case of 2013.  She has advised me to avoid 2014 altogether.  I asked her how I can possibly do this without Dr. Who's Tardis and she really has no idea.

When you think about it, the older you get, one year becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of your life.  For example, when you are a one-year-old, a year makes up 100% of your life.  When you are five, one year is 20% of your life.  No wonder it seems so long for Christmas to come around.

Then when you're thirty, one year is 3.3% of your life.  Spins round a lot faster, doesn't it? Barely time to make money to pay the bills and buy your children their long-awaited Christmas presents.

OK for those of us fifty and over one year has plummeted to 2% and decreasing, of one's lifespan. How to solve this predicament?  The various states may go in for daylight saving, but I don't think anybody is going to approve of relative year lengths according to age. Therefore, if you are fifty, say, no one is going to make one year equal to ten for fifty-year olds so that you feel the same excitement on reaching Christmas as you did when you were five. No one would be capable of correlating the various calendars for the corresponding years anyway.

It's as mind boggling a thought as Einstein's Theory of Relativity.  In fact, it's about relativity and so there is no way it's going to catch on.

No, the sad thing is that the older you get the shorter the years become.  Compounding this is the fact that your time is growing shorter and at an exponential rate of progression.  It will seem like you'll be dead and in the ground by the end of the week even if you live another thirty years after turning sixty.

We all want to reach old age save the rock star who sang "I hope I die before I get old".  The problem with this is, you don't stay young.  Wouldn't it be great to live to eighty years and not age a bit over twenty?  This would lead to some problems, like the man of twenty who brings the hot chick of eighty home to meet his parents.  Their only succour would be that she'd be dead before the wedding took place.

Then, of course, what would kill us?  Would we just drop dead at a certain age?  A bit too much of a let down if you still feel and look twenty.  I suppose this is the only thing that makes old age viable.  We're winding down to the inevitable.

I am beginning to resent the speed at which the years are passing but I'm also turning into one of those people who is glad to have been born when I was.  I don't much care for the way the world is going and the speed with which things are changing with no one, apparently, in charge of what changes we can and can't accept.

I worry that people have too many children without thinking of the consequences and then the poor darlings are turned into worker drones to support the macrocosm the world and technology has become.

Another thing that bothers me is how confident the youth are, how little they respect experience and yet, how they don't seem to think about where they're heading and what it's all about.  Never fear, when their percentages start to drop they too may have an epiphany.

By the time they are forty they probably think they'll have access to 3D printed kidneys and other organs; they may even have access to 3D printed offspring if they miss their fertility window.  Why have in-vitro fertilisation when you can print out a little darling according to specs?  Well that's a little far ahead, but it may happen.

What are Baby Boomers, who just want a mobile that's a phone without the Internet attached, going to think of 3D grandchildren?  Not much, I can assure you.  What youth forget is that the Boomers are called that for a number of reasons.  We were there at the start of the technology boom.  That's why we're sick of it.  We can take all the new technology in, we just don't want to anymore.  It doesn't have to get smaller and smaller and faster and faster for us to appreciate it.

Some things are worthy in themselves.  When I had a dinosaur of a computer, my stepson said it was slow and out of date.  I said that if a cave man saw it, he'd be pretty impressed. It's all relative you see.  You can keep pushing down the pedal of a car's accelerator until you reach exorbitant speeds, but what's the point?  You are only human after all.  That too may change, sadly, but until then, let's just enjoy the good things we have.  The tortoise won over the hare after all and he probably stopped along the way to smell the roses.

END

CHRISTMAS STUFFING.

Santa After Christmas Stuffing

Why do we wish each other "Happy Christmas" as if there is some doubt it will happen;  a fifty percent chance of it going awry?

Chances are it will.  There is so much expectation surrounding the enjoyment of the day; so much negotiation between couples as to whose family to visit when and for which meal.  There are definite odds of a stomach ache following a self-induced stuffing that would, were the turkey still alive, make it feel a lot better about what's been done to it.

I haven't put up a Christmas tree since my son moved into his own home.  For many years now the thought of Christmas approaching has filled me with a foreboding much akin to someone facing execution.  When the Christmas trees go up in shops two months ahead of December I begin to get aggro.

This year I am mending my ways and attempting good cheer.  I decided I was only making myself miserable.  There may be a reason for my attitude.  I have the rare honour of having been being born on Christmas Eve.  As a child I felt, and still do, rather special.  No one forgets my birthday.  When I was very young other children envied me because I had presents to open the day before they did.  Then I had more to open on Christmas Day.

I do remember the sheer joy Christmas arouses in every child.  As adults it is our duty to give our own children that thrill, even though it has passed for many of us.  I rather admire adults who still approach Christmas with that thrill intact.  I don't know what's wrong with them, but I wish I had some.

It must be lovely to be in a cold country at Christmas.  Down Under we insist on eating a hot Christmas lunch when we are hotter than the food.  Kitchens reach Hades-like temperatures as hams are glazed, turkeys and chickens roasted, oven vegetables turned and browned, gravy simmered on the stove, plum pudding warmed over a steamer and custard in a Bain Marie.  The sheer logistics of this exercise rivals an army's preparations to invade an enemy country.

When finally we sit to eat we take time to view the overladen table and realise, with sinking hearts and perspiration dripping from our foreheads, that it is our duty to force feed ourselves, even if moving on to another family feast for dinner.  It is as if we a geese being force fed in preparation for our livers being harvested for foie gras.

There is something exhausting about eating a meal with numerous relatives and friends.  There are too many people to serve the food on plates in the kitchen so everything is placed on the table and the dishes passed around as people fill their plates.  Christmas bonbons must also be pulled apart and toasts made.  The food may have been hot when it left the kitchen but is now cooling just to the point of encouraging salmonella.

Christmas Day in Australia is quite often a heatwave no matter in which capital city you live.  I grew up in Sydney and a Christmas heatwave always finished with a Southerly Buster.  At around four p.m. ominous black clouds would blow in from the south accompanied by torrential rain, lightening and thunder.  The temperature would plummet to a delicious cool.

One of the things that brings on a Christmassy feeling in me is the sound of cicadas.  Their song fills the air in the month leading up to Christmas, their throbbing chorus pulsating  in air that vibrates with heat. They are The Little Drummer Boys of an Australian Christmas.

I blame the British for the way we celebrate Christmas in Australia.  At the peak of their power I'm sure they deliberately set out to colonise every hot, inhospitable place on earth just to escape the cold and damp of home.  I damn them for this as I have purely Anglo-Saxon ancestors who all conspired to come to Australia and, over time, combined to make me.  They must have liked the heat and isolation.  I do not.  I am a post-penal prisoner of this country.  Had I had a choice, I would have been born in the south of France or even Italy.

But here I am stuck when others still come voluntarily; immigrants and refugees from Abidjan to Zaire come to this wide, open and hot country.  They have brought with them their cuisines.  The Australian palate has changed so much in forty years it is now truly international.  Except at Christmas when it reverts, like a recessive gene, to traditional British fare.  It is as if the Union Jack is stuck in our gullet, which is much the way we feel on Boxing Day.

I miss a Christmas full of people; the ones I had as a child.  I married and moved with my husband to where work took him.  Our son grew up only occasionally knowing the kind of big family Christmases his parents had enjoyed.  When my husband and I divorced, our son's Christmases became smaller still.

I feel I've let him down but now he is married to a girl with a large family and they are making their own happy Christmases.  I must say they do it with a vengeance.  Now with a baby son, they deluge each other and the family in gifts.  I feel like an outsider, but I'm happy he has an extended family now.  He missed it for so long.

The worst Christmas of all is the lonely one.  There are so many who would give anything to be a part of the chaos of a family Christmas.  I've had my share of these.  Such people aren't alone in being alone.  They are a kind of family in their own right.  For the rest of the year, the lonely can cope with it but on that particular day it becomes so much harder.

So enjoy your 'stuffed to the gunnels' Christmas.  Revel at the aches in your stomachs and heads.  You have done Christmas proud and those aches are much better than the pangs of loneliness.  I guess that's what Christmas is all about, and a lot of stuffing.

END

PLEASE EXPLAIN.

CAN SOMEONE PLEASE EXPLAIN THE PHENOMENON OF SHOES HANGING FROM ELECTRIC WIRES?

Quite often when I'm driving down a street, I see a pair of jogging shoes hanging from the center of electric wires.  No matter what city I'm in, there will be a smattering of these across numerous suburbs.

No one has been able to explain why this is.  So, I am going to put forward some theories of my own.  I am eager to hear from anyone who cares to give their explanation.

1. Is it a sign of an alien abduction?

2. Do possums have a secret agenda?

3. Is it a clever nesting place for birds in order to hide their chicks from other predatory birds?

4. Is it a political statement?

5. Is a cult behind it?

6. Is it subliminal advertising designed to make you think about buying shoes?

7. Is it a secret code?

8. Why do the shoes always end up at the center of the wires?

9. Was someone in them at the time they were put there?

10. Why waste a good pair of shoes?

11. Did the shoes stink so much that throwing them onto the wires was the only place to get rid of them?

12. Were they thrown by a drunk who, in spite of inebriation, had superb aim?

I really want an answer to this question as it causes me no little mental anguish.  Actually, none at all, but it is curious. 

PEEK-A-BOO ! (For my grandson.)

PEEK-A-BOO!

                                                          I am quite new

                                                          All I do is eat, sleep and pooh.

                                                          Sometimes I cry,

                                                          I don't know why.

                                                          I came into the world quite dumb,

                                                          but soon I learned to know my Mum.

                                                          My life is really pretty snug,

                                                          'Cause I'm wrapped up in a rug.

                                                          I don't know that there's more to come,

                                                          for now it's all about my tum.

                                                          The blob of custard in my skull

                                                          will gradually become less dull.

                                                          From then on I'll find more to do

                                                          than eat and sleep and coo and pooh.

                                                          But one day I'll look back and find

                                                          that life was best with a little mind.

BLOGLESS (aka CLUELESS)

BLOGLESS.

 

It's high time I added a post.  I've been trying to get the Blog header's image right and add text to it.  This has proven very difficult.  One good thing about computers: they work the mind.  They are like a contrary spouse; you have to do things their way or not at all.  But that's not a put down to contrary spouses; they teach you things.  If you survive them, you get stronger and savvier.

 

But now I'm Blogless.  I only like to write when I have something to say, a bit like "Mr. Ed the Talking Horse".  I have a son like Mr. Ed.  I wondered if he'd ever learn to talk.  It turns out he was just saving it for when he had something to say.  When God was handing out tongues, I got two and my son got a lot less.

 

So, what to rattle on about today?  I had a thought that I should rate the films I've seen this year.  Don't you love those '100 best films to see before you die' things?  When they add "E.T." and leave out "Gone With the Wind", I just don't bother to read them.

 

I should add, not that it really matters in any way, that I obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree majoring in Communications, with particular emphasis on the study of media: that is, cinema, television, radio and newspapers.  Even more particularly the media studies on cinema were based on Australian Cinema.  I was subjected to many showings of Australian cinema and learned its history.

 

Now, I'm not crazy about a lot of Australian films but its history is interesting.  Australia was the first country in the world to produce a full length feature film.  However, while it had creativity in great globs, it lacked business savvy.  The U.S. bought up all the distribution rights in the Pacific and it was bye bye to Australian cinema.  The U.S. film industry went to California and churned out films to an already captive Pacific and who knows where else and they were darned good at it too.

 

Isn't it a kind of just retribution that the U.S.A. is now getting a lot of its major stars from the land Down Under?  I believe it's because Uncle Sam became so productive, so efficient, that it forgot its soul.  They had to look elsewhere for inspiration and the Oz film industry, so delightfully unaffected by commercial success, was still creative.

 

From this dearth of pecuniary success, the Australian industry still worked at producing actors and directors and from these came Peter Weir, Fred Schepisi et al.  It was like a definitive moment in evolution that creates a type.  Hollywood, paying attention to this new evolutionary step forward, immediately imported it.  Once ensconced the Australian directors must have asked probably the whole of, NIDA's (National Institute of Dramatic Art) graduates to Hollywood.  While an American cannot do an Australian accent without permanently damaging their tongue, an Australian actor can mimic the American drawl as easily as throwing a prawn on the barbie.

 

As this was happening Australian television took the hint.  For years it had made shows like 'Homicide', 'Skippy' and 'The Sullivans'.  The actors, although perfectly normal looking human beings, were not glamorous or, even necessarily, good looking.

 
"Neighbours" started the push to pretty people.  Even Kylie Minogue with her, then, appalling Australian accent, killed off her dreadful eighties hairdo and, with a little help from Britain, rounded her accent and became quite dazzling.  Many stars from that equally appalling (in my humble opinion) show were then chosen for their physical spunkiness.  What else, after all, could have kept it going?  Many somehow made it to the US and stardom.

Where am I going with this?  Actually, I have no idea.  I think I was about to give a rating to the movies I have seen this year; that is 2012-2013.

One I really liked was a strange, eclectic little film called, "Moonrise Kingdom".  It just keeps coming back into my mind when I have forgotten so many others.  Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand, Bill Murray and Harvey Keitel all play curious under-stated roles.  I won't explain it.  If you like curious, memorable little films, it's worth watching.

 

"The Heat", with Sandra Bullock was actually really funny.  Her foul mouthed co-star helped make the film, about two very different policewomen, a real winner.

 

On the other hand "Gravity" with Bullock was awful.  Some fool thought a hand held camera would work even with the extraordinary special effects.  George Clooney floats off into space to die as if he's going down the street to buy something.  He doesn't seem to mind at all.  He reappears as sort of a ghost in Bullock's mind but, having given her a pep talk, disappears again to his next movie.  The final scene with Bullock is obviously an analogy to life beginning on earth.

 

The appalling remake of "Carrie" with the actress who should have known better, Julianne Moore as her mother, also uses a hand held camera.  No one, absolutely no one, and I can speak for everybody, likes films made with a hand held camera as if they are trying for the realism of a documentary.  So why use one on a big budget film?  Is this a new trend or is someone cutting costs?

 

The only other interesting things to watch this year have been the television series, "Game of Thrones" and "Hannibal" .  I can't believe the producers of "Game of Thrones" finished it at Season 3 and left us in limbo.  They are still making Season 4.  So too are the producers of "Hannibal".  I hope, that after all this waiting, we're not left with a feeling an anti-climax; so long the case after you wait too long for something.  It's like you work up too many digestive juices waiting for a meal and, having eaten, get a stomach ache.

 

To ease my distress during the wait I've tried watching a few new shows.  "The Blacklist", with James Spader, is so-so.  Spader was one of the cutest, sexiest men in movies.  He is now slightly overweight and bald.  He's grown as an actor in every respect.  I really miss cute Spader.  Older Spader is nothing to look at and the show is entertaining but predictable.

 

I tried watching "Elementary" with Lucy Liu as Dr. Watson and someone who plays a modern Sherlock Holmes.  I yawned and turned it off.

 

Then I found "American Horror Story".  If you saw "The Twilight Zone" in the Sixties, this is its worthy grandchild in the Tens (2010's).  It's quite different to "The Twilight Zone" but is also very spooky and it's great to see an older Jessica Lang really acting.  It's a suite of stories; three to be exact; each with about eight episodes.  The same actors play different roles in each suite.  If you've got the stomach, I recommend it.  This is really different television, but don't let the kids or the easily spooked watch it.

 

OK, that's a post.  I'll have to label it something; maybe Film and TV Critiques.  Yes, that'll do.

 

END

 

 

 

  

COMPUTERSAURUS.

Image courtesy of Alamy.com

I bought my first personal computer in 1992.  It was an Amstrad and had a whole 256K of memory.  I had trotted along to a specialised computer sales shop to make this purchase so that I could be properly advised on what I needed.

The sales guy assured me I should not even consider the 356K model.  This was top of the range and only a business would need its memory capacity.  As the years and computers advanced relentlessly forward, I clung obstinately to my little Amstrad.

It saw me through my study for a Communications degree using it's very natty word-processing program Locoscript to write essays.  After completing the degree, at thirty-eight years of age, and finding no suitable employment, I lowered my expectations and looked for secretarial work.   While I hadn't been looking, the job title had become redundant (after centuries of perfectly good use) and become Administration Assistant.

Once upon a time a secretary remained trained for life.  But things had changed, and will continue to change eternally, due to that clever initiative of the computer manufacturers - planned obsolescence.  Armed with my superlative Locoscript skills I headed for the recruitment agents who, very shortly, would decide they ran the universe after they changed their job description to Human Resources.

Again, while I hadn't been looking, secretaries ...ah... administration assistants, had to suddenly know more, much more, than their employers who only had to contend with learning how to operate their new brick-sized mobiles.  Their AA's had to know Wordperfect 4 then 4.1 and MS Word 365 then 4.  This was still the 1990's.  Then someone added insult to injury and invented Excel.

Every year or so a new version of these would come out.  Some offices had old versions. some new ones and you needed to know them all.  It wasn't like walking into an office in the 1970s, before my employment era, when all you had to contend with was a typewriter, a photocopier, a phone and a filing system.  An Administration Assistant had to be multi-skilled because their employer didn't have the time to learn how to operate a computer.  The AA was there for that.

And so began my intensive efforts to train myself up, at some cost, so I could become viable as an employee.  It didn't matter what I did, however, I couldn't keep up with the technology train. Every recruitment agent put me through tests.  I became good enough at these to fudge my way through Excel, Word and Wordperfect at reasonable levels of proficiency. Tragically my typing speed never could creep above 50wpm.  Who cared with all this technology?  Word processors made the job of typing faster than with a typewriter so only a Hansard reporter really needed to be a speed whiz.

The bane of my existence was when a knowledge of MYOB became de rigeur to get a job. I'm no accountant and avoid dealing with books and statements like the plague.  I'm a creative person.  What I can do to numbers isn't worth thinking about.  While I struggled, computers, programs and operating systems continued to change at light speed.

Then along came the Internet and email.  These were wonderful additions but work became more intensive with their introduction.  Mobiles got smaller and then along came laptops and Smartphones.  Managers and employers had to become completely computer savvy, but the result was that they could work faster and harder wherever they were.  They can remote print documents on a printer in their office from their laptop on a plane.  The result of this is that many of them no longer need AA's.  Well I didn't like office work anyway.

It's been a roller coaster ride but it has involved a huge amount of constant learning by the humans who have to absorb the information as it comes along.  In fact we are all, everyone of us, in business or not, suffering from information overload.

Youth get excited at every new development.  My partner says we're getting old because we don't want anymore change.  I disagree.  I was a computer programmer in my youth. That was before everyone involved with computers started describing themselves as in 'I.T.'  They don't differentiate between whether they sell the things, program or install them.  They're just in 'I.T'.

The day I knew computers were going to be a source of irritation to me was the day I took my Labrador to the Vet.  It's not easy holding on to a forty kilo ball of muscle at a reception counter while waiting to pay the fee.  The waiting room isn't big enough for a number of dogs on leashes at a suitable distance from one other.  A dog on a leash near another dog becomes defensive/aggressive because, being restrained, it doesn't feel able to defend itself.  I know this because I had to take said Labrador to special training lessons due to a slight personality disorder he had.  I learned a lot, he didn't.

The Vet's receptionist took my money and attempted to give me a receipt.  The cash register had been hooked up to the computer and couldn't be opened until she found the command to do so embedded deep in the menu.  Another person was called to help.  They "Ummed" and "Aahed" and tried different things.

I suggested they could just open the register, give me my change and a hand written receipt.

"Sorry, no can do.  Only the computer can open it.  The payment option is about six levels down in the menu," they informed me as my arm was being wrenched off.  "New system," they explained.  What wasn't in the 90's?  The whole process took ten minutes. 

Every advance in computer technology has, like Newton's law, been met with an equal and opposite regression.  For example, my dear Amstrad, with its tiny but adequate memory, did not make it into the Millenium.  Word had taken over and I bought a Dell with all the latest Windows stuff.

I like things that last.  My vacuum belonged to my mother and lasted thirty years.  My fridge lasted twenty, my washing machine is still going and is so old it has no lid surround.  To me that is technology at its best.  Ah, but not so the Dell.  After eight years the Internet got a tad sluggish, if not to say, bad tempered.  My stepson told me it was a dinosaur.  I said it suited me fine.  But it couldn't load Windows XE and the Internet finally slowed so much it gave up.

The real problem is not that the computer's memory is too small, it is that the new Word, Excel etc. come with stuffing like the air that fills potato chip packets.  I wouldn't be surprised if there were polystyrene registers labelled as memory.

We've gone from Kilobytes to Megabytes to Gigabytes to, heaven forbid, Terabytes. Somehow the programs worked with mere Kilobytes.  Somehow man got to the moon with the help of a really basic computer.

I want you to think about this.  Apparently a human only uses ten percent of its brain capacity.  What in the hell are we going to do with terabytes?  The home computer just doesn't need that much memory.  Oh, some say it's about speed.  Yes, sure it is.  Just how fast do you want to go?

Most people use the Internet for social drivel.  A little time lag can add some depth and thinking time.  Newspapers on-line have become magazines and their major sections are devoted to which man Kim Kardishan has recently married/divorced or had a baby with.

I've just bought a new laptop as my old computer threw up its mouse and surrendered.  I told it I still loved it but it told me it had become impotent and I should look for a younger one.  I gave in and went for a laptop, my first, which came with Windows 8.  I'm used to Windows but not this version.  This has to be the least user-friendly beast ever invented.  I swear they do it on purpose so they can fix it next time.  But then you have to buy the upgrade.

Give me Computersaurus Rex, please.  Stop all this progression.  Just stop for a while and smell the roses before someone digitizes them. Please.

END

THE BUYING OF SHOES FOR FEET THAT DON'T MATCH.

OK. Straight down to business.  As a female I love shoes.
What is it about women and shoes?
Well, this is my theory. Feet aren't like the rest of our body.  They don't really get fat.  No matter what perfectly shaped, or misshapen form they carry aloft, feet are fairly free from obesity.
Yes, the uppers can get pudgy, but I bet you'll never see feet that have grown fat sideways.  Well, I haven't, yet.
And so a girl can treat her feet to shoes that even a super-model could wear.  Until she gets a bunion.

As a teen and well into my twenties I could comfortably teeter around on a pair of four-inch heels all day.  This caused my mother to proffer dire warnings that I'd ruin my feet. The fact is, they deteriorate anyway, and I decided that I'd wear high heels as long was able to.  I would walk uphill and down all day on the University campus where I was studying.  I remember a particularly gorgeous pair of pale yellow high-heeled sandals with platform soles.  Thirty-years later I still remember those shoes fondly.

Back on the home front, and much earlier than my teen years, my mother would often look at my feet, tut-tut and tell me that a doctor once told her that she had the most perfect feet he had ever seen. (I swear she would repeat this story at least once a year.)  She would also state with confidence that I would get bunions.  She was wrong.  I only got one.

I am now, at fifty-something and finding it a push to last in three-inch heels all day.  But, and this is a big but, it's not because of the bunion; my feet as a whole just complain. The bunion doesn't hurt at all; not one bit.

No, the problem with the blasted bunion is that it's ugly.  I love high-heel sandals but these days as I look down at my right foot from aloft, the mighty protrusion sticks out from the side of a strappy shoe as if it is a State trying to secede from a nation; as if to break off to become an island or peninsula.  On top of this ignominy, the big toe above it is turning sideways as if to wave it good-bye.

Basically the bunion is starting to deform the big toe and the other toes are following suit.  In order to fix a bunion, a surgeon must break the bone, or bones or whatever makes up a bunion, remove the calcification and reset what's left.  Then the foot is encased in a cast for six weeks.

Apparently it is painful for both the foot and the person to whom it is attached.  It also means not being able to work.  This would be a plus is I had money.  But even if I did, I could scarcely use the time to sashay around Europe or the Greek Isles.  Also if I was to go by plane I'd probably have to pay for the cast as excess baggage: "I'm sorry, you can't take that foot on board with you, it will have to go in the luggage hold."

I am not in a rush to have this operation for the sake of vanity; not yet.  Until that time I am not prepared to inflict the sight of my pedal prominence on the world, and so I must now buy shoes that are more enclosed.  This brings with it a whole other problem in that the bunion attempts to force its way out of the casing.  After two months, the shoe will appear considerably wider than its opposite on the other foot.  The bunion will then victoriously break free, splitting the side of the shoe open, not at the seam, but by tearing through the leather or whatever material stands in its way.

The bunion does not just grow sideways.  It bulges downwards too.  The bottom of the tragic shoe will also wear through.  I was walking one day in the rain only to find water seeping into my shoe through the bottom.  I hadn't noticed there was a hole in the sole.  It's a bit like being the Titanic, only the iceberg strikes from within.

This leads me to shoe buying.  This should be a happy occasion but, as we women know, you may set out with heart aflutter and with visions ecstatic.  We may lust at the sight of row upon row of artfully laid out leather, patent and polymer temptation, all under spotlights that make colours luscious and shines shinier.  Then, having been as vigilant and patient as a hunter, having lassoed, harpooned or netted one of those rare and hard to find, almost extinct creatures - a salesperson - the fun starts.

You send him or her off with three or more samples of shoes to try on, having stated your size and colour preference.  Some time passes (often as long as it would take you to do your yearly tax return) and the salesperson returns with variations on your theme:  "The brand you have chosen in this one is quite a small make and rather narrow and the colour you want is not available in a larger size."  You are told that your next choice is a brand that is a generous fit: "No we don't have a smaller size, perhaps you could wear an insert to pad it out."  What about the last shoe?  "Well this is the last one, unfortunately no one can find its partner; we think it may have been stolen."

One day I hit pay dirt.  There they were, a lovely pair of shoes on sale and I mean cheap.  Why?  Because the last box contained two shoes of different sizes: one was an 8, the other 8 1/2.  The right shoe was the bigger shoe.  They fitted me perfectly.  Somewhere out there is my opposite.  If only I could find her: a woman with a bunion on her left foot; a woman with the same taste as me.  Think what we could achieve together!

Oh how I would love to shop for shoes on-line: so many shoes, so many choices.  Alas, until I find my alter-bunion-ego, I cannot.  Mostly I return from a shoe shopping exercise shoeless apart from the ones I was wearing when I left the house.  Once home I head straight for the fridge and try out a bottle of wine for size.

END

UPDATE: This post was written almost ten years ago.  I now have two bunions and have mostly resorted to flat shoes.  I still refuse to have an operation as I'm not in pain.