What a difference a boot makes

OPINION: Southland women are obsessed with boots. It's true, writes Sarah McCarthy in this week's Uptown Girl.

Every Tom, Dick and pensioner is rocking a pair of boots these days.

Pointy toes, round toes, big stabby metal stiletto heels, no heels. They're everywhere, like Chicken Man or scabies at a school camp.

And they are scary to buy. If anyone remembers, I girded my loins and got boots a few years ago but I had to tromp all over town and go through the ignominy of being pretty much unable to actually zip up any of the boots in most of the shops in Invercargill. Baaaaah.

So when the ones I finally got finally disintegrated, finally, I was full of woe.

Woe and cheap wine. The thought of buying new boots had me quaking in my, well, also disintegrating ballet flats.

But I woke up in the middle of the night last Friday with the thought that I would wear a short dress to my cousin Amy's farewell party and that I would blummin well have some boots to go with it.

So Mr mr and I hit town. (He decided to come. I didn't make him. I even warned him that there was the distinct possibility of a trawl through Farmers afterwards but he persevered. Brave lad.)

We went to Goody Two Shoes and I tell you what, times have changed. In record time it was off with my (scabby terrible old) Chuck Taylors and on with my (gorgeous new sexy) Briarwoods. Any potentially embarrassing zip problems were waved aside by Jan, wielding (I kid you not) a lace to aid in the yanking of leather over recalcitrant chunky calves.

Now look. If you've been putting off trying boots because of chunky calveage, DON'T.

They've finally worked out that most women have actual calves and not bits of sinew straggling down under their bony kneecaps. I'm told most of the shoe shops now are ready to help with a sulky boot and you can even get MAGIC SPRAY that stretches leather. And that even skinny girls can have big calves, not just plumpty girls like me. It's all changed.

Of course as I got dressed for my big night out I got the zip most of the way up, decided to let the leather warm, took a step and then there was an awful pop and a sudden rush of air on my calf. I thought I'd bust the seam. I cried so much and so hysterically I thought Mr mr was going to slap me. But instead he calmly pulled the boot off, zipped the zip down and then effortlessly up again and then put the boot back on me did it right up to the top, no worries. Of course.

PS Bon Voyage, Milne. Behave yourself.

» Sarah McCarthy is a Southland Times staff member.

- © Fairfax NZ News

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