Norma awoke at 6AM to the pointless inevitability of another
day. How
long will it last?! She yawned and rubbed the sleep from her eyes, turned
over on her side and shut off the pathetic electronic bleating of her Shaun the Sheep alarm clock. Too often these days she wore the wrong
trousers to work, and worse it seemed, the wrong shoes - for how can one accept
oneself if wearing the wrong shoes?
Style, alas for Norma, had always eluded her, or at least
she felt over-looked by the vanities of fashion. Nothing fitted her curious body shape: she
was no pear, rather, as she hastily spread-thin her morning toast, a damp
loaf. Cardigans were too long, dresses
too loose in areas where the vogue was for them to cling, and her shoes..well!
On the daily commute into the city for work, she never ceased
to notice the immaculately dressed. And
to Norma it appeared even the female guard, in her strict, boyish uniform, had
on a more preferable outfit. But, at
least winter had now arrived, Norma sighed, since her duffle-coat concealed
all.
..all, of course, except her shoes.
If the train journey into town from the home-counties was
bad enough, the short, connecting tube ride to the office presented all sorts
of opportunity for flagrant humiliation: from the city boys in their
pin-stripes, to the well-fed, big-haired, rosy-cheeked London secretariat. Being in close proximity with these other-worldly
creatures made Norma blush and go hot under the collar of her blouse. As usual, most of her highly-sexed fellow
passengers gazed at the floor, or at their manicured reflections in their
shiny, expensive shoes.
Norma’s desk was situated towards the back of a large,
air-conditioned, open plan office on the sixth floor of an impressive glass
monstrosity in an area where every other eye-sore belonged to a law firm, or an
investment bank. Norma worked for a
building firm. The man at her
neighbouring desk was simply called John, he was Norma’s team leader, and among
many of his curiosities, he had no legs.
While this represented a profound inconvenience to John, to Norma it
bought a little light relief.
No shoes, no blues.
Nasty, pointy, itchy,
scratchy, annoying little shoes!
Standing around the kitchen area during one of many tea
and/or coffee breaks, Norma’s eyes were particularly horrified this day, by the
scarlet-red, buckle-strap slippers her co-worker Eloise had chosen to
wear. They really were outlandish, sexy
at the same time; no carpet would be too good for them worried Norma, whereas
any old shag-pile might disappear as fast as it could crawl at the sight of her
footgear. Witches shoes!
Then over lunch at the office canteen, came the news that
Rhian, another of Norma’s co-workers had become engaged to be married at the
weekend. Rhian, who had the physical
carriage of a pregnant rhinoceros, said she was: ‘happy all over’ (which must
have been very happy indeed), as well
as ‘thrilled from tip to toe’. At this
Norma shot a swift glance under the table, even
Rhian’s shoes seemed as if they belonged on her fat pads, moreover,
someone else evidently thought so too.
Norma spent the remainder of Friday afternoon mooning like Cinderella’s
step-sister.
At 5pm every Friday, the management, in their good grace,
would arrange after work drinks at a trendy cocktail bar nearby. It was always loud, always crowded, full of
legs, feet, and shoes. The jukebox
played hits from the 1980s to everyone’s unapparent discomfort, including Wham
and Careless Whisper. Unsurprisingly, the line ‘guilty feet have
got to no rhythm’, positively shrieked out to Norma, and made Eloise’ scarlet-red
slippers sparkle even more brightly.
The evening dragged on, in an orgy of excitable patter about
the future, to Norma, a big black-hole.
Holidays, engagements, weddings, baby-showers, all floated in and out of
the conversation, but the more Norma’s head swam with jubilee punch, the more
talk of these things sunk her gin-soaked spirits, and when the time came for
her to leave, it was raining outside.
On the walk home from the station to the sanctuary of her
bedroom, in a rare fit of peak, Norma took off her shoes, and deposited them in a rubbish
receptacle. Gone, forever. The uneven surface of the
wet pavement hurt her feet at first, but by the time she reached her front
door, she felt nourished by rebellion, and cleansed; she had at last had forced herself to walk on (metaphorical) hot coals, ready to turn a corner.
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