Avoiding putting a foot wrong

It's exactly a month since I broke my left fifth metatarsal - that startlingly long bone connecting your ankle to your smallest toe. Any number of friends and acquaintances have nodded wisely and declared there's no need to ask how I broke it, all assuming I plunged from my high heels while tangoing.
I've taken grim delight in informing them that, au contraire, I was wearing gumboots at the time.

After a day's gardening and with rain forecast, I was filling the wheelbarrow with a last load for the compost heap when I stepped backwards into a void and came down hard on my buckled foot.
If nothing else - and it would be difficult to identify any other benefits - this last month has been a miniature lesson in empathy for those suffering any kind of restricted mobility.
As described before, I was incapable of using crutches or a stick with any degree of reliability, let alone panache. In fact, the latter was a further health and safety hazard, having slipped on the path between house and road. And I simply don't have enough strength in my arms to support my body weight for more than a few steps at time. After I dispensed with these, I walked flat-footed, to avoid flexing the damn foot. It made for slow, awkward progress.
My confidence was shaken, too, especially after the orthopaedic chap said to beware of uneven ground and walking around at night. And I was nervous of steps and slippery surfaces. An intimation of old age, this - the way your  world can steadily shrink around you.
The ortho also told me that if I was involved in a vehicle collision while driving within three weeks of the breakage, my insurance company would probably refuse to pay out.
All that I could have put up with with good grace - after all, friends kindly rallied round and drove me out every day for a latte and my mail. But what's really hurt is that the breakage has stopped me dancing and miserably restricted my footwear.
Heels have been out of the question. If I put a foot wrong, I risk displacing the bone, which would mean surgery and plaster. Anyway, they hurt - something to do with the pressure down through my foot. Even sandals have been no-go, because I feared slipping sideways.
Bad weather, of which there has been quite lot, is no problem because I can wear boots. But through those gorgeous hot days of Christmas, barbecuing and beaching, I was clomping about in sneakers. In a small way I was reminded of my childhood and the ever-present one-kid-per-class who spent his or her primary school years in a corrective boot, usually because of polio.

A childhood polio
victim, 1960

You just can't dance or feel good - off your own property - in gumboots or sneakers. So I'm signing off for 2012 with this beautiful specimen - one of the last images from my 2011 shoe calendar (go here to order your own for the coming year). Thank you to everyone who read the blog and/or commented. And please stick around!

Garden glam





My smashing new gumboots from No. 1 Shoe Warehouse



Gone gardening

Remember Margot (Penelope Keith) in The Good Life? She who used to "garden" in a wide-brimmed hat and gloves, carrying a trug? I never look like that. At least I don't think I do. I've never actually checked because I don't give a damn what I look like when I'm gardening. The priorities are ease of movement, freedom from concern with tearing and muddying, and protection - from the elements and from the garden itself.
The current ensemble de jour is an unpleasant blue t-shirt that lost its shape after the first wash, a pair of trackpants that long ago gave up the fight to stay black and which are tucked into flowery No1 Shoe Warehouse gumboots, and black canvas and rubber gloves. If the sun is shining, add a thick layer of sunscreen on all exposed parts, and a kahki brimmed hat that looks as if it should be protecting the balding head of an angler. Dressed like this I can accomplish almost anything.
I often have to. "Garden" is a euphemism for a patch of hillside bush, to which  my basic approach is slash, pull and chop. This has to be done at least twice a year at the macro level unless I want the greenery to engulf the house. Amidst this, I tend two or three little spots of dug earth that I fondly think of as beds, and where every summer I even plonk a few annuals. My annuals of choice are usually Crystal Palace lobelia, if I can get it, and dwarf cosmos, as much for their ferny foliage as for their shining white faces.

I often drift outside to inspect these little outposts of civilisation during the course of the day. Within seconds, I'm getting earth under my nails and collecting dirt and biddybids on whatever non-gardening clothes I'm wearing. My favourite activity during a long telephone call is digging the moss, dandylion and baby dock from between the bricks that form the terrace at the front of house. Conversing while bent double has an odd effect on the voice, but most people are too polite to ask what the hell it is I'm doing.
I always wear long pants outside, to avoid the mosquitos and numerous scratchy things that lurk in the undergrowth. In winter, my arms will also be well-covered but in summer it's just too hot. Consequently I went to tango on Sunday night looking as if I'd barely survived a dog attack.
The freedom I feel when I launch a planned assualt and dress for it is exhilerating, empowering. It's true, what feminists have always said - we dress boys and men for action, girls and women for being looked at. There's lot more to be said on this topic. But not by me, not now - I'm off to work in the garden.