The Ugg Boot and other Unsuitable Footwear

Like most women I know, I love shoes. Shoes are the ultimate accessory and can make or break any outfit. This is why I have so many pairs (and Fiance will confirm that I am talking about a pile of shoes that could probably challenge Everest's claim to being the tallest mountain) - for every outfit I compose, I have at least two sets of footwear that are capable of bringing the outfit together, and dictating whether it is smart, or casual, or quirky, or comfortable (as well as being entirely colour co-ordinated, of course).

But like many things, making an appropriate footwear choice can be a complicated affair. No matter how far ahead you plan your outfit, life can throw little things at you which instantly make your shoe choice entirely unsuitable.

Let's take my recent hot topic of disgruntlement - the weather - as a perfect example. You cannot do a look other than casual when it snows - glamorous heels just don't cut it when trying to wade through the powdery stuff. Although they did once, when I was able to use a particularly thin stiletto as a built-in crampon that actually helped me to walk when caught out in an unexpected snow fall - but it's not something I'd recommend, given that the second time I had to get through snow in heels, I ended up abandoning the effort and walking barefoot.

It is because of the barefoot experience that I will now not venture outside during snowy times unless I have donned a pair of wellington boots. They make your feet invincible, allowing you to walk confidently through the worst the conditions can throw at you - snow, slush, water, mud - you can skip happily through them all, knowing your toes within will remain clean and dry. But even wellies have their downsides - the first is their inflexibility, and the resulting hindrance of your travelling speed. This was proven all too recently when I missed a bus to work because I was incapable of moving at the necessary speed to get to the stop in time. My second issue with wellies is their lack of heat insulation. Even when wearing three pairs of socks, my toes quickly go numb when wading through the snow - and I physically couldn't wear any more socks and still be able to squeeze the wellies on.

But without doubt, nothing compares to the wellington boot when it comes to snow. Yet even with the increasingly cold and white winters we have experienced over the last couple of years, many women still haven't embraced the practicalities of a solid pair of wellies, instead opting to head out in their fashionable wool-lined Ugg boots (or any of their more reasonably priced equivalents).

At first glance, these may seem like perfect snow shoes - they are flat, flexible, have a good grippy sole and are lined with soft and fluffy niceness, designed to hold your toes in a warm cuddle of comfort. However, you should not be fooled by the apparent appropriateness of this popular boot because they hate you for wearing them in wintry conditions.

Let me expand. I ventured out in the snow last weekend, and saw a worryingly high percentage of female shoppers walking round the city centre with expressions of pure misery painted across their faces. There was a single cause for all the sad females - their warm and cosy boots had not protected their feet from the snow, but instead had maliciously soaked up the melting slush and transformed into sodden lumps of fabric attached to the end of their legs. The lack of waterproofing renders these boots not warm and cosy, but damp and cold and to be avoided at all costs in bad weather.

This isn't the only problem with Ugg boots. I have a pair - well, I have a more reasonably priced Rocket Dog version - which cause me their own problems even when the weather would not result in them turning into water hoovers. When I wear my boots to work I become electric - and not just because I wear them so awesomely.

It turns out that I don't pick my feet up properly when I walk, and the rubber soles and wool lining thus combine together to turn me into a walking charge of static electricity. This is unfortunate, because it means that this happens when I touch metal things:

My inability to open a door with a metal handle without receiving a static induced electric shock has become something of a hindrance. This is especially upsetting because I need to pass through two such doors on the way to two vital locations - the kitchen and the toilet.

I thought I could resolve the situation by touching the wooden door before the metallic door handle, thus earthing myself and stopping the shock. I have had to ensure that I drop an anecdote about the situation into as many conversations with colleagues as possible, lest they start to question my method of opening doors - which, in its current form, has evolved to stroking the door and tentatively reaching for the handle, before jumping dramatically backwards (usually accompanied by a swear word or two) and shaking my hand vigorously. It's the kind of behaviour that would draw a questioning glance without insider knowledge as to what I am doing and why.

Of course, the other foolproof method of avoiding shocks would be to ensure I don't wear those particular boots to work anymore. In fact, that is the tactic that I am likely to embrace, because I can already feel a Pavlovian association forming between the act of opening a door and receiving a shock, and being scared of doors is, quite frankly, an affliction that I can afford to live without.

To conclude: Damn you all unsuitable footwear. I love you, but you have the power to make me fear inanimate objects.

Winter: Stop Throwing Tantrums

I believe I have proof that Winter is reading my blog.

In my last post, I mentioned that our region hadn’t been hit particularly badly by the snow storms at the weekend. Since then, our region has become the victim of a relentless snowfall that has persisted on falling and turning everything whiter than it should be.

On Tuesday, using the car to get to work was quickly identified as a sketchy idea thanks to a couple of inches of freshly laid snow on our road. We walked to a bus stop on the nearest main road, being passed by a number of intrepid (read: foolish) drivers, ping-ponging their way down the hill, using the kerbs on the opposite sides of the road as their only method of steering and/or stopping. We successfully caught a bus into the city centre, but once there my journey to work ground to a halt. I missed the bus to the business park I work at by a matter of seconds – we (by which I mean Fiance) were level with the back window as it pulled away from the stop. At this stage, I would like to stop and award a big thanks to Fiance for being a gent by running much more efficiently than me and getting a lot closer to hailing it than I managed (although I am blaming that entirely on my wellies and their inability to improve one’s running technique). 

In the end, it took me two hours to get into work, thanks to missing and delayed buses, road closures and Winter’s general maliciousness towards me. Fortunately, I outwitted Winter on the journey home, and accepted the offer of a taxi-based lift with someone from work who doesn’t live far away from me. The taxi even made it up the hill we’d seen cars ping-ponging down earlier, so I only had to trudge up the hill that forms our road – take that Winter.

I actually haven’t left the house since – my boss having agreed to let me work from home for the last couple of days. It was whilst staring into space and pondering one particularly complex Excel formula that I noticed the beginnings of an avalanche forming outside our lounge window.

It took me a while to work out why there was a mound of snow, taller than me, sitting directly outside our window – closer inspection revealed it was the result of our wheelie bins holding up our hedge that is rapidly collapsing under the weight of all the snow that has fallen on it.

I took a few pictures of the avalanche forming.

I may, or may not, have embellished them.

For the record, I still hate Winter.

Winter: You Suck

As a species, I believe we are split into two firm categories – those who love summer, and those who love winter. I fall squarely into the former group, mainly out of a hatred for the nasties that winter brings. This is for a number of experience-based reasons.

For starters, getting soaked is something that should only happen by choice:

It is not a pleasant experience to be made dripping wet when you don’t expect it, and winter is an expert at exposing you to such horrors.

While rain can be an unpredictable beast at the best of times, in winter it manages to excel itself. While you assume an inconspicuous layer of white cloud in the sky means a rain free day awaits you, winter is planning how best to ensure your unplanned dampness. Without warning, the sky will darken into a writhing mass of the darkest grey cloud, awaiting the perfect moment to fling its wet arsenal at your unprepared body. 

For the last three days, winter’s perfect moment has been planned for the 15 second dash I have to make between the office and the car park. Maintaining a 100% record for each of my days at work this week, the sky had completed its transformation from friendly to threatening with half an hour of my day left to go, leaving ample time for the rain to start falling in a deluge that quite frankly, was unnecessary given that I had to go out in it.

Typically, I had wrongly assumed that I wouldn’t need any form of water-resistance device when I left the house that morning, but even if I had, there is no item of protection that would have been able to stand the aqua-laden onslaught I had to face to get back to my car. You see, the short journey from office to vehicle involves travelling between two buildings which, I have recently learnt, means the slightest breeze is transformed into a howling gale as it travels down the resulting tunnel. Science says that when you add water to such a scenario, you will get horizontal rain (actually, I don’t know if science does officially say that, but it has happened consistently this week so I’m running with it).

Horizontal rain is the worst kind of rain. Not only is it wet, it means that there is a lot of wind around in order to perpetuate its horizontalness. And I hate wind too.

Sitting next to each other in the alphabetically ordered list of weather, wind and winter have formed a strong friendship and go hand in hand everywhere they go. I always seem to forget about how much I hate wind until the final part of the year approaches and it raises its whirling head once again.

There is no protection you can take from it – it lives to ensure you look flapped and ruffled whenever you cross paths. It will blow plastic bags into your face, and leaves into your hair and there is nothing you can do about it.

Unless you stay inside of course, but that is a rather impractical attitude to take for an entire season (especially for me, given that we live at the top of a particularly blustery hill). But even if you did elect a complete avoidance tactic by hibernating in your lounge for several months, you would have to endure its constant whining as it performs laps of your house at top speed, knocking all your stuff over as it goes. There is no relief from the gusts of a potent wind, and that sucks.

Snow sucks too (I’m on a roll now). I used to love snow when I was a kid – hell, even when I was a student, waking up to the sight of a lightly dusted winter wonderland would never fail to put a smile on my face. I think mainly, this was because it never really snowed properly until last winter. For about a month, our road was covered in a slippery carpet of partly-melted-then-refrozen-again snow. Remember I said we lived at the top of a hill? Yeah, that came into play.

 

 

Last winter’s snow did indeed leave me having to plod up a hill barefooted because my heels did not succeed where the car tyres failed. I got home tired, miserable and worst (but most obvious) of all, I had cold feet. I’ll let you in on a little secret – it is impossible for me to be warm if my feet are cold, and walking directly on snow is not a recommended method for keeping the tootsies toasty.

While I will not deny that these are all things I seriously dislike about winter, they are mere inconveniences sent to challenge me every year rather than forming the real reason for my hatred of all things winter. The reason for dislike turning into hatred is simple.

Winter weather does horrible things to my hair.

Winter, you make my hair look bad. We were never destined to be friends.

Before I finish up here, I will begrudgingly admit to being a fan of the occasional positive point that winter brings. I have come up with a grand total of one so far. When it is cold outside, the water from the cold tap is refreshingly cold.

There you go, I said it. There is something good about winter.

But before you get carried away thinking that this could be the humble beginnings of a change in seasonal allegiance, I can reassure you that I can't help but see a negative to this single, lonesome positive. Because the colder water means it takes longer to boil when you’re gasping for a cup of hot, soul-warming tea. And I do hate being made to wait for a steaming hot cuppa.

Winter, you suck because you make my hair bad and you delay my tea drinking.

I rest my case.