As everyone knows, Getting Away From It All involves a lot more than just physical distance - rituals and psychological strategies must be employed before you feel truly released from everyday tedium. You can record a new and slightly smug message on the answering machine telling everyone you've "no idea" when you'll be back or you can throw out every bit of food in the fridge, including non-perishables, because you can't imagine a day when you might be around to eat them. For me though, it has to be shoes - one hint of even the shortest weekend break and I feel I should get into shoes so comfortable I could conceivably sleep in them. It's the same impulse that created the lounge suit and has a nation of Americans reaching for their "sweats" if they need to really chill out - in order to relax it is imperative to be wearing a dedicated outfit that will encourage the right karma. In my case, it is a little more perverse, because I don't actually like comfortable shoes. Not if comfortable also means flat; flat shoes are bound to put me in a bad mood. I have lost count of the number of times the first day of a holiday is wasted as I stomp around filled with the paradoxical knowledge that yes, I am on holidays because I'm wearing flat, comfortable shoes, but as per usual I'm completely miserable because the stupid things make me feel short, fat and flat-footed. Day two usually sees me back in strappy sandals. This antipathy to flatties took on a slightly more sinister note on a recent trip to Galway when, as usual, I took the first quavering step to really relaxing by donning my very old school trainers. They're called Adidas Adria, they're made of canvas with three bright blue stripes and they're flatter than a glass of Seven-Up left in the sun. They go down very well in trendy nightclubs and at casual brunches in friends' back yards when everyone usually has a good chat about how they don't make trainers like that anymore. This is all very well, but after two days of short wanders to the beach and back to the pub, I was practically bed-ridden with legs bent like nutcrackers. It did not take an Einstein or indeed a Dr Scholl to work out that this complete seizure in the leg department was the result of wearing flat shoes for the first time in, oh dear, seven years. The tendons in my calves were used to being pulled tight by two inches of heel and were complaining loudly about being stretched to their natural length.
It all started, like so many great love affairs, in Paris. I was 18 and working my way through a number of jobs including hair wrapping outside the Pompidou Centre, waiting tables at Eurodisney and looking after two incredibly rich small children. The only thing that was constant during that time was my awe of Parisienne women, who were just too chic to be true. Luckily, I was still in my hippy-chick phase so their chi-chi clothes did not cause me too much jealous rage - what I lusted after was their posture, their willowy height, their enigmatic clip-clipping along the boulevards. I wanted their shoes. Unfortunately, I was living on the kind of budget that people accuse you of exaggerating when you get home. If my memory serves me correct, it was somewhere around £1.60 a day, which allowed for a perfectly adequate diet of baguette, cheese and fruit but left me a little short of francs for a pair of red suede kitten heel mules. I did buy a pair of shoes in Paris though, due to an oversight in the accounts department at Eurodisney. After half an hour trying to persuade a very uninterested French clerk I had been overpaid, I suddenly remembered a certain pair of shoes, took the money and ran. They were black with two-and-a-half-inch heels and a thin tapering toe and I loved them with a passion.
When I arrived back in Dublin airport wearing them, together with some rather glamorous flea market finds, I was immensely gratified to find my mother didn't recognise me. "But you've grown, you look great," she cried and I was hooked. Since then I have always worn at least a two-inch heel - chunky suede boots, tortoise shell sandals, red stilettos, black lace-ups or blunt-toed loafers - they don't have to be knee-knocking and impractical, just well-heeled. The thing is, I firmly believe I was born two inches too small - damned to be just-below-average rather than tall. I wear high heels as a way of reclaiming my rightful position in the world, not, God forbid, for vanity's sake.
When, prompted by the diktats of some fanatical fashion editor, I do wear low-heeled shoes or trainers, I feel dumpy, I feel timid, I feel ever so slightly deformed. It's not a syndrome that is particularly unusual or difficult to live with. Many women only feel comfortable, or should I say at ease, in a shoe with a bit of a heel while the legions of teenagers and pre-teens that have now perfected the breasts-first-bum-last clomp needed to wear the towering Korky's style heel, show that noone's too young to get the bug. It may well be a vicious circle with magazines telling us we must look like seven-foot schoolgirls; we the consumers believing them and donning a pair of heels, then continuing to wear them so as not to be intimidated by all the other women wearing heels. But what the heck, I'm not sure I care. So what if I'll probably spend the latter part of my life at the osteopath, high heels give my legs a better, more taut shape. What's a twisted ankle and an inability to deal with cobblestones when faced with a choice of crocodile, baby pink suede or perspex? Admittedly, being unable to walk after two days in my Adidas trainers is a little bit worrying and does offer a valuable lesson. There's no such thing as just dropping everything and getting away from it all; next time, I'll have to spend some time learning to hill climb in Manolo Blahniks.