Tell us about your favorite pair of shoes, and where they’ve taken you.

Shoes are like children, there are no favourites. Each pair has distinctive and separate identities. Loved for being themselves. That sums up the top tier of my shoe hierachy of needs.

Second and subsequent tiers of shoes are like work colleagues or less close relations. They may ascend to the top tier, but on the whole if they slipped into a bag destined for a Charity Shop  I would not miss them.

The picture above is of the feet of Gertrude Stein and Alice B Tolkas. Painted, as everything is this week, by Beryl Cook. My Grandmother and her sister and friends were just a little younger than Gertrude and Alice.

It could easily be the feet of my Paternal Grandmother and her sister Alice. Between the ages of 2 and 4, I was always puzzled that only my grandmother and her sister or friends wore the same shoes as me.

I have no idea what sort of shoes anyone else wore in the early sixties.

I had a close relationship with my grandmothers shoes because I spent the majority of my time with her under the dining table. She had brought up two children in the second World War, when the safest place for children, during air raids was under the table. She did not update her views on childcare in line with peacetime. Children should be seen but not heard, was elevated to children should not be seen or heard. So under the table I went with a book while she played Scrabble overhead. This was not an unhappy experience at all. But I realise now that it is not ideal.

My grandmother described me as a precocious child when my dad collected me after his work. Because I would read or look at the illustrations of any book on their shelves.

There was nothing else to do..

There may have been an incident when I was slightly older of chewing my grandfathers Old Holborn Tobacco while reading Treasure Island. It could have been worse, there was almost certainly medicinal brandy somewhere in the house.

All rather a thought or two away from favourite shoes but  shoes like these old style Mary Janes accompanied me on my first adventures into a love of reading books. And that has taken me to all sorts of places