Friday 30 March 2012

I've a feeling we're not in Kansas any more.....



Red sparkle shoes……

At the age of 22 I bought some red shoes, some red sparkly shoes akin to those worn by Dorothy in ‘Wizard of Oz.’ These beauties helped me through hours of Law Degree cramming, an experience that left me certain of one thing: A don’t have a head for law but I do have feet for Oz!
I was thinking, no strike that, I was pining for my old shoes one morning this week and I thought how often are we wanting to incorporate something from our childhood into our adult (and often mundane) life?
The Art man and I love all things retro and consistently start conversations with each other with: “Ooooh do you remember…..” Whilst he was a child of the 70s and me a decade later we often look blankly at each other but interested nonetheless in what the other has to say.  I wonder why it is I need a ‘talisman’ of a time past with me every day. Today it is a collection of rather nice bags sporting a polka dot design, that I swung gaily walking into work but another day it could be Chanel-ish pearls, vintage hairclips, bright red lipstick etc.
Do we have to keep one foot in the past to consider a change? I know I do and find my logic in what I remember my Grandmother would do, in a very different era. Maybe that’s where my love of the 1940s comes from, comfort in the knowledge that warming the teapot, as she did, has the potential to re-create her environment of calm. I’m not going to change it now and I know for certain if she had seen my red sparkle shoes she would have loved them.