Glenda May Richards

I knew I had a problem the other day when I had to meet a friend and had half an hour to kill. I passed by the shop and thought, ‘Mmm, I’ll just poke my head in and see what they’ve got…’ An hour later, I rushed up to my mate patiently waiting on the corner. She looked at the bag in my hands and shook her head. “Where was it this time?” she asked. “Waterstones? Borders? Don’t tell me you went to WH Smith??” “No, Oxfam” I said. “It’s ok, it’s a charity book shop!” My girlfriend looked at me in despair. “Why can’t you just be into shoes like normal women?”

It’s true, somehow I missed the meeting where you learn how to pronounce Manolo Blahnik properly and debate the difference between kitten heels and wedgies. Where you practise not fainting at the prospect of spending £300 on a pair of shoes. Where you don’t question why shoes are so… well, important. Or maybe I was there, in a corner, reading a book and not paying attention.

Time to confess… I am just not interested in shoes. Give me a choice and I’d rather be reading Mary Shelley than shopping in Shelleys. I am more interested in Patrick McCabe’s latest novel than Patrick Cox’s latest line. Surely a worthy sign of intellectual ambition I ask my feminist sisters? Apparently not…I keep having to defend why a hour browsing in a bookshop is a bit weird whereas no-one blinked when a friend of mine brought 12 pairs of sandals for a week in a Bali resort that was advertised as ‘barefoot chic’.

Of course I own shoes, I am not traipsing about barefoot, chic or otherwise. Let’s see, there are my trainers for the jogging I never do, slippers (well-worn), pumps (see, I do know some terms), boots (trendy knee-highs, so there) and um…another pair of slippers (reading is primarily an indoor activity). I was genuinely shocked to discover that sometimes women buy shoes and then never wear them. This is unfathomable… it would be like buying a book and then never reading it. Ok, I didn’t finish Will Hutton’s “The State We’re In” but at least I opened the cover and read the introduction. Apparently there are shoes in some women’s closets that are still in their box. It’s kind of cruel really.

But no more cruel than the torture that is having to buy a new pair of shoes. The annoying tradition of displaying only one shoe, which is invariably the impossible Kylie size. The tedium of asking the teenage salesperson to find your size in that strange storeroom in the back that no-one-on-pain-of-death must ever enter. The lack of reading material while you are waiting…

All right, perhaps I’m a bit of a bookaholic. But frankly, when I stack books up against shoes, those frivolous frippery for your feet come out wanting. Books have better:

Flexibility – you can only ever wear one pair of shoes at a time but you can have several books on the go – one for the bus journey, one beside your bed, one to read while the kettle’s boiling…

Money Sense – you never see 3 for 2 sales for shoes, now standard in bookshops everywhere

Health & Safety Records – no-one ever got a blister from reading a book

History – the world’s first seat of learning, the Library of Alexandria, was filled with books. Don’t think Julius Caesar would have bothered burning it down if it had been filled with shoes.

Presentation Skills – books are displayed in cases, shoes are still in the closet

Bonding Abilities – if you read a book you think a friend would like, you lend it to her and then talk about it together. No equivalent relationship development for shoes.

plus Bonus Brain Points – do you think people would have laughed at Imelda Marcos if it was discovered she had been hoarding 3,000 books?

There are some bad points to being a book obsessive. Birthday presents get a bit same-y. On my last birthday I was given 3 books, all of which I had already read. And books aren’t exactly romantic. I once brought a book while waiting for a date and when he arrived he looked embarrassed and said, “For god’s sake, why are you reading? This is a bar!” I never saw him again. He wanted a binge drinker – I guess my book addiction makes me a binge thinker.

Glenda May Richards is that most exotic of immigrants, the Canadian Brit. A cocktail goddess who lives in south London, her writing can be found on modgoddess.com
For her last article for TTI, click here