Red Shoes

Red shoes just strike a chord with me, don't ask me why, they just do. For some reason this picture of red shoes on the ends of pudgy stockinged legs reminded me of when I was a little girl. No, I did not have pudgy legs and red shoes, that's the whole point...there was a girl in my class at school who always had cool denim pinafores (the height of fashion in 1974), stripey stockings, little red leather dolly shoes with a blue apple on the front, and a swishy swingy ponytail.

Growing up with a mother who was a hairdresser who insisted I take part in ballet and tap dancing (oh ok, I LOVED it - christ chaps, I was only 6 afterall...) I spent much of my childhood in rollers, or when the experimental mood really took her, with short, permed, curled hair, so it's no surprise that I had a severe case of swingy ponytail envy. My father had an absolute fit when he came home, saw short curly mop and realised it wasn't the wig she'd had me trussed up in earlier in the week, it was the real thing and my long straight hair I could almost sit on, was gone, never to return. No amount of fitting on his part could bring it back. I don't know if he ever quite got over it but I know I kinda didn't, I still get ponytail envy and I sure as hell still love red shoes...well, any shoes really, so thought it was worth dedicating a post to red shoes...