Girls are supposed to love shoes. A fully-blown obsession with what we wear on our feet seems pretty much essential for female bonding, understanding half the plot lines in SATC and looking hot when out drinking/dancing.

I don’t love shoes. In fact, mostly, I really fucking hate shoes. In the past week I’ve gone from falling over the way I normally do (ankle gives way, I fail to recover and end up on the floor) to being on my feet one minute and sprawled across the ground the next, with no idea how I got there. It’s embarrassing, not to mention pretty painful. Still, I suspected that the blame had to lie with my ankle boots, and that buying a new pair was something that could no longer be avoided.

A friend heroically dragged me round a number of shoe shops yesterday, most of which were in that horrible sale phase where you have to dig through piles of mismatched shoes in an attempt to find out if they actually have what you want in your size. She also wisely waited until I had wine with my lunch before she ventured the following:

‘Jones the Bootmaker?’

‘Urgh, no, too frumpy!’

This is bullshit. Many of my best/comfiest boots in the past have come from Jones’ and I know they work for me. I reluctantly agreed to look and tried on a pair of black suede ankle boots with a minimal heel. They were, y’know, neat, elegant, sensible. The kind of thing that most women would wear with no fuss. I put them back.

We went to Kurt Geiger. I stroked a pair that were similar, but with an extra 3 inches of heel. These were the ones I wanted, even though I knew that, while I might get away with wearing them in the office, the chance of being able to walk any distance in them was minuscule. There was no point even trying them.

You can probably guess how this ends. I stroked a lot of other sexy boots that I wanted but knew wouldn’t work for me, and in the end I went back to Jones’ and bought the flat ones. They are fine, honestly, and I’m making a fuss about nothing, but for once I really want to wear sexy shoes, and by that I don’t mean boots with a heel, I mean proper, vertiginous ‘fuck me’ stilettos.

I’d really love to buy a pair that I could get away with wearing just in the bedroom. I want a guy to undress me until I’m wearing nothing but hold ups and the shoes, and then fuck me against the wall, hard. Is that realistic, ladies? How much balance does it require? And, if it’s feasible, where’s best to buy cheap but pretty shoes?