Shyheels

No opportunity even for mid-heels today - a day of gadding about on an assignment that requires steel-capped work boots. I considered bringing a pair for after hours at the pub I’m staying at but after I hefted my bulging camera bag, with the tripod lashed to the outside, I thought better of it!

Indeed not boring at all! So much more fun than flats - and quite liberating to step outside the pigeonholes. it always strikes me as funny to think that if we were to read in National Geographic about a tribe of South Sea islanders who’d developed all these complex and contradictory taboos about a style feature on their footwear, we’d smile and find it quaint but amongst ourselves we take it so incredibly seriously, as though it were a natural law, something encoded in our chromosomes: women wear high heels, men do not.

Yes! That’s one of the things about heels that fascinates me. There is sort of this “official” view these days that they are tools of the patriarchy, designed to hobble and objectify women, and must therefore be discarded and abandoned. on the other hand high heels are worn with panache by some of the most powerful women in the world who spend small fortunes on designer heels and speak of the sense of empowerment that comes with putting on a pair of lofty stilettos and striding into a meeting. what’s the story? Nobody waxes lyrical about their hiking boots or a pair of loafers but you can fill a book with quotes about the transforming magic of high heels. Heels are a fascinating cultural icon

I suppose it is odd that there are so many men on a high heel forum. We’re we’d a pretty normal lot really, whatever our out of the ordinary fashion tastes. I was always curious to try wearing heels - perhaps it’s the people-watching travel writer in me and my fascination with the foreign and exotic. Heels looked fun, stylish, a challenge and had the additional allure of the forbidden. I originally was just interested in trying 8-10cm chunky heel boots - a kind of edgier version of the hiking boots I’ve lived in for ages. I tried them and really liked them and was emboldened to push the envelope a bit further into the world of stilettos. And now trying 12cm stilettos- the black diamond slope of high heels!

I smile to think of the three of us, all very different, living in three different countries and on different continents, doing much the same things … I agree - 7cms is a minimum

Yes the story of how heels came to Europe and became a masculine fashion, later to be repudiated during the Age of Enlightenment is fascinating. I’ve done a fair bit of reading and research on the subject since I first learned of it and when I tell people about it they are invariably interested, even if they scoff at the idea of men in heels. Humans are a strange species

I’ve not been doing overly much myself, just wearing my 12cm heels while writing or otherwise pottering about. I do like mid heels too and have a couple pairs of boots with 8 to 9cm heels which look nice and are so easy to wear. I’m always tempted to go with them and not just out of laziness either. This is the style that originally attracted me to heels and is still a favourite

Yes narrowboats are susceptible of movement although it is generally very subtle. Living on a boat as I do I am quite used to it and tend to forget about it entirely - as I say, it really is very subtle - so it may be that I am better in heels than I imagine I am; that if I was on a dead-level rock stable surface I might be more capable of walking fluidly in 12cm heels, although I expect I am still a good ways off the sort of effortlessness that one needs to carry off the style. in general if a narrowboat is pitching noticeably, something is happening - usually it’s some clown in a rental boat speeding by at a rate of knots and throwing up a wake, or you’ve tied up at a lock landing, really close to the gates of a big lock and someone’s thrown open all the paddles, or else there are some big winds blowing.

Sometimes on the boat I can find it a bit odd. If the water level in the canal drops, which happens fairly often, the boat will be on a slight list (or something more severe if you’re unlucky or don’t know not to moor your boat in certain places) If it’s just a slight list you sometimes won’t detect it until you put on your heels and suddenly feel as though you’d never worn heels before. And if you’re just learning in 12cm heels it can be quite challenging

I know the kind of sloping surface you’re thinking of. Some of the cinemas are still like that here and would indeed be awkward in very high heels, I am at present eating lunch in a village in the Yorkshire Dales that would be a nightmare in heels of any sort - and even a bit chancy in hiking boots. Sloping irregular cobbled streets (large cobbles and many cracks) and made extra slippery by rain and mud …

Even the two centimetre difference between my 10cm heels and the 12cm ones is more noticeable than I’d have expected. I notice it while I’m sitting at my desk writing - but in a nice way

Wow - that’s quite a week! I smiled at your experience with low seats in high heels. I had the same but sitting on a low settee in my 12cm heels and spent the whole time trying to figure out how to sit and where to place my heels so I didn’t look like a seated preying mantis with my knees jutting up under my chin. And then how to get up again! Without calling to mind something struggling out of a wallow. I can’t imagine doing that in 13cm Hot Chicks! Standing in a queue in 13cm heels would be a serious challenge too! Definitely an earned rest this week! But well done!!!!

Definitely doing very hard work this week. I can’t believe I still have another two days to go, and then a week later I comeback to do all this again …!

Leading tour groups is a really fraught business. You simply never know which way they’ll turn. The only safe thing is utter neutrality in just about everything. From the outside it looks like really easy money but it really isn’t.

I know what you mean. I could probably get away with knee boots with chunky heels - but I’ve also learned that elderly American tour group people are utterly unpredictable and can either like or hate you for the flimsiest and wackiest of reasons.

One of the additional strings to my bow as a freelance writer and photographer is escorting tour groups - giving lectures etc. I don't do a lot of it, three or four times a year, but the gigs are always nice ones and takes me to interesting places. I used to go all over the world, as with my other assignments, but these days, having grown weary of flying and all the attendant hassles, I stick to Britain. At any rate, I am on such a trip now. Yesterday I was taking to my group about Charles II. In addition to talking about the politics of the Restoration I talked about his coronation portrait - now hanging in the throne room in Holyrood House in Edinburgh. Aside from his holding a sceptre and orb, as symbols of newly restored royal power, he's wearing four inch heels. I mentioned this fact to see the reaction. It was dispiriting, but not surprising. My group, 24 elderly Americans, smirked, sniggered, mocked, and cooed and ran through all the trite schoolground mockery. There was something so drearily predictable, unthinking and Pavlovian about it. I explained the history of heels, how they'd been a masculine fashion and how the cultural shifts in the Age of Enlightenment, with his emphasis on science, philosophy, comics and political thought changed men's fashion forever, while women, seen as ineducable, were allowed to keep their pretty colours, laces, silks and heels. My group were quite interested, I could see that, but then, as though on replay came the same smirking, cooking and mocking yet again. It was like they were on a continuous loop, stuck in a rut. Part of me felt like telling them I had a pair of 12cm stilettos in my room I am practicing with, but I need this gig.

I agree. They were originally designed as apres surfing wear in Australia, and in my days as a student at the University of Sydney they were standard lounge-about and study wear. Everybody had them. They were inexpensive and comfortable.. The fact that they now command big prices never ceases to amaze me. Some years later when I was living in Melbourne, Uggs had slipped down the social scale a bit and were often being worn by the rough crowd in lower socio-economic neighbourhoods - the sort of rather sleazy types who wear track suits everywhere today. One such suburb was Heidelberg, in the city's inner east, where Ugg's popularity was such that they became derisively known as "Heidelberg stilettos".

Absolutely! That will be fun for you! How nice it will be to wear them out to a stylish evening! Splurge! Treat yourself! im really excited now that ive a goal to shoot for. And thanks for the vote of confidence!!!

I’m quite excited by it - something to aim for! I can actually start believing I can do this!

Your English is good enough that I forget that you’re not a native speaker. Your 200 metres has now become my goal for my 12cm heels. I needed something to shoot for aside from a vague aspiration to walk fluidly in them. I can aim for a smooth 200 metres and then work on improving and hopefully becoming more comfortable in them

Thank you! I had to laugh when I realised I was still in my 10cm heels, but the bright side I suppose is how completely at ease I feel in them - hoe nice it will be when I do the same with 12cm! Our little support group is really proving useful! I think of both of you when I put on my heels each morning. Oh, and I meant to say that aside from being hugely impressed by your newly acquired abilities in the Hot Chicks - 200m would amply take you through a night out in them, say to a restaurant or something - I am also hugely impressed that you’re doing all your posting and reading ours in English! That’s brilliant. i have - or had - a gift for languages at one time and could speak several but for various reasons never stayed the course. I’m envious now of those, like you, who are multilingual

Yes walking 200m gracefully in Hot Chicks is quite an accomplishment. I cannot imagine achieving that myself - I shall be delighted to walk gracefully in my 12cm stiletto boots. Speaking of which I had an amusing episode this morning, when I got up and put in my stiletto boots to start my workday. I get up very early - typically 4am - since that is my most creative time. I’d left my stiletto boots by my kitchen table, ready to put on in the morning. Now, I have three pair of stiletto boots - one is quite a luxurious OTK pair in black Nubuck suede with 9cm heels. The other two are the same style in Italian Heels, their Tina model. One is in black leather with 10cm heels, the other is in very dark brown leather in 12cm heels. I thought I had put in my 12cm ones this morning and was happily congratulating myself in a major breakthrough. To be sure I was only traipsing around my boat, but doing it was an ease I’d never imagined myself managing in 12cm stilettos. I was really quite chuffed - bring on the Hot Chicks! I did a lot of extra walking around, just to enjoy this breakthrough all the more. Had I been moored ina more heel friendly location I’d have gone for a celebratory stroll. Alas, I discovered I had mixed up my boots and was wearing my 10cm stilettos, not the 12s. Back to beginners again ….

There are an increasing number of companies that are suspending shipments to the United States - it’s simply not worth the costs and complications I see that Royal Mail is no longer accepting companies parcels for US delivery …

That’s hugely impressive to go 200 metres in a pair of 13cm Hot Chicks. And @mlroseplant is literally miles ahead of me. I’m afraid I am very much bringing up the rear. I can walk quite comfortably for a decent distance -when opportunity offers - in my 10cm knee boots and my 9cm OTK boots. And yes, it is quite exciting to do it and satisfying to be able to do so. I am very much looking forward to attempting my first 200 metre walk in my 12cm boots. That will be really fun

For me the problem is getting that half mile! Heels - especially stilettos ! - and boat life is an uneasy mix. I can, and do, wear my chunky heeled boots out and about. It can be a bit of a challenge along parts of the towpath, but it’s doable. Stilettos are almost hilariously inappropriate. It’s not just a matter of balance, it’s also a big risk for ruining the heels/boots. Nevertheless I’m practicing on board and working out places where I can go to practice - changing into my heels once I get there. It takes a certain amount of dedication and I must admit there are days when I decide I’ll just wear them here on the boat, and make another pot of coffee …