Tackle grasped by a thigh-booted blonde

14st 1lb; no real idea but I’ll guess 10 units of alcohol yesterday; 1,401; Dartmoor.

I had to do some work today, which came as a bit of a shock to my system, I can tell you. In an interlude between meetings, I took a phone call from my Blind Date of last week, which was the first time I had spoken to her since I saw her disappearing into London’s early hours in taxi mercifully powered by a diesel engine rather than the pounding thighs of some economic migrant from the East.

This reminded me that I had not addressed the question arising from our date of the appeal of female footwear, so eloquently raised in a comment submitted by Helios on 26 March. I shall post a further comment there dealing with some of the specific points she made, but here let us tackle the broader (EEEE fitting) question of ladies’ feet and their coverings.

It may be a generalization too far to say that all women are obsessed with shoes, but most of the women I have known have liked nothing more than shopping, and ranked shoe shops high on their list of treats.

I am a man. (I have a certificate to prove it.) I go shopping only when I have to, and with the specific purpose of buying what I need as quickly as possible and getting back home to my desk or easy chair. In the case of shoes, I buy them only when I am forced to admit that the last pair is beyond economic repair, and invariably choose sensible brogues identical to the ones I have just discarded (or, to be honest, put away in a cupboard because they probably could be worn again in a real emergency).

After an exhaustive study, which has taken up most of the last three decades, I am conscious that there is a whole specialist genre of pornography devoted to meeting the needs of men who have a thing about feet and shoes. An elementary understanding of economics suggests that there must be more than a few of them around, but I am not amongst their number. When a New York securities trader last month sued a lap dancing establishment because their employee had accidentally smacked him in the face with her stiletto heel, I was not amongst those flooding bulletin boards with suggestions that he should actually have been happy to pay a bit extra for the privilege.

Even in more mainstream porn, where the female lead frequently divests herself of all her clothing but keeps on her jewellery and shoes, I keep thinking “That must be awfully uncomfortable”. For her male co-star(s), that is.

In short, I like my women completely naked, at least in the case of the 5% or so of the female population where the removal of any part of their clothing can be considered to be a potentially positive development. For the other 95%, there is much to be said for the Muslim burka, particularly when paired with some stylish dark glasses.

Having said all that, my Blind Date revealed that she was going to spend a long weekend in Devon, where she expected to be enjoying a number of footwear-related delights including the wearing of riding boots and some thigh-length waders for fishing purposes. I’ve always found horsewomen very attractive for some reason (boots, jodhpurs, a well-cut jacket, a nicely tied stock and, for complete satisfaction, a useless top hat. Hang on, just got to leave my desk for a few minutes).

That’s better. Now, where was I? Oh yes, the image that filled my mind for the rest of the afternoon was that of an attractive, willowy blonde wearing thigh length boots and sod all else. She was holding a rod and laughing. Luckily it was a fishing rod, so it was clearly a fantasy rather than an unhappy memory. I don’t think it exactly helped me with my work. Still, as the late Queen Mother said of being Empress of India, it was very nice while it lasted. And now, unlike the Crown of India, it’s come back. Hang on, just got to leave my desk for a few minutes …