Shyheels

Thank you! I would love to think such a thing might happen

There was a nasty story a while ago about a woman who wore stilettos while watching boats come up the Foxton lock flight. She was walking on the grassy bank above one of the lock chambers when her stiletto heels sank in the soft earth, sending her toppling backwards into the feed pond that provided water for the lock. A boat was coming up the lock and she was sucked into the sluice as it filled the chamber. She somehow went through the sluice along with a few thousand gallons of water, and emerged in the narrow lock chamber bobbing around with an 18 tonne narrowboat. How she didn’t get drowned, crushed or chopped up by the prop is anyone’s guess. But she emerged unscathed. I’ll bet she doesn’t wear heels around the locks again though!

I have seen her on Instagram. It is very impressive and she does it extremely gracefully

I’m sure the conversation helped, but she did notice you walking in those Hot Chicks and was interested enough to comment. You had to be doing something right. a walk of 170 metres in Hot Chicks is very impressive - about 170 metres further than I could go. It’s a distance I’d like to try in my 12cm boots though - although I doubt anybody watching me would be inspired to dig out their heels and start wearing them!

I’ve driven a Fiat Punto, not in heels, and I didn’t feel comfortable with the pedals either

What a cool story! She obviously knows her heels if she had a pair of Louboutin Pigalles in her wardrobe and it's nice to think you got her interested in bringing them back out again. It is also quite a compliment to your abilities in the Hot Chicks. The fact that you could do a few turns around the block in them is a wonderful feat in itself, but to do so looking so graceful that an onlooker is inspired to want get out her Louboutins and think about wearing them again is the best kind of compliment you could have. Not many people can walk so fluidly in Hot Chicks that other people want to take up wearing heels as a result.

Same. But in reading your comment the idea suddenly came to me that if I got my bike out of storage, I could put on my heels and pedal up the towpath to a place where I could go for a stroll and get in some real world practice. Not cycling in heels for thrills, but for a practical reason.

That’s true, there is little in the way of genuinely high heels unless you are paying Louboutin prices. I quite like mid heel boots but even there, I’m seeing where mid heel is now reckoned to be about two inches, or 5cm, and “high” heels are 7cm. i would want 8cm at least for my mid heel boots but they are rare and tend to be pretty ugly when I do see some.

The only ones I’m aware of are called waders. Unless one is fly fishing I simply don’t see the point in such things.

I started a separate new thread on driving in heels. There seems to be demand for it

I’ve not bought any in ages although I have seen some I’ve fancied. Living in a boat is an excellent way to curb one’s acquisitional instincts

Add to the list of silly things people do …

I’ve never done it, never intend to do it and don’t even own a car but it seems like driving in heels is a topic of interest so I decided I’d start a thread. i wouldn’t mind trying cycling in heels though. I’ve seen it done quite stylishly by women in London and on the Continent.

How many police reports include an inventory of everything g the driver was wearing? Unless it was something spectacular, like you were driving home in your Folies Bergère costume, nobody is likely to notice

Hmmmm. I still think the odds of anyone being taken to court for driving barefoot or in heels is vanishingly small. There would have to be some truly spectacular other factors and even then that would just be an extra charge thrown in for good measure.

That’s what I would have guessed too

I too am working on a novel - a black comedy crime story set in the 1920s. My heroine, a delightfully a-moral flapper, wears heels but only because it is naturally a part of her way of dressing. The only time the heels actually figure in the story is when she conveniently stumbles in them and falls in the way of a detective whose pursuing a crook whom she feels sorry for, tripping the lawman and ending the chase. Her breezy excuse that she just can't walk in these silly things falls on sceptical ears since she won a Charleston contest while wearing them only the previous night, but since she's also extremely rich, aristocratic and well-connected nobody is inclined to argue the point. The detective takes his fractured skull like a man and she goes on her way with an airy flip of a bejewelled wrist.

Yes but proving it would be another matter - virtually impossible and I can’t see a public prosecutor being interested in pursuing a comp,I aged and likely unprovable case … for what?

Thank you! I’m quietly excited. You and @mlroseplant have both been huge helps and great influences

Back to the high heels challenge: I've been continuing to make good progress in my 12cm boots. It's even more fun now to drop down to the 10cm ones, which I can handle - at least in my indoors practice area, with something close to aplomb. With an eye to one day soon trying out my 12cm stilettos my venturing to a cafe, I rather boldly ordered myself a very nice pair of chocolate-brown leather trousers. They were boot cut and so would have obscured the shafts of my boots but they looked smart in the photo so I ordered them. They arrived yesterday, and while I liked them, they were also really baggy in the lower leg, well beyond what I thought boot-cut should be, especially with slender calves like mine. So sadly they'll have to go back

Wood is an excellent shock absorber. It’s why surveyors usually have wooden tripods for their laser surveying gear - it’s not that they can’t or won’t afford carbon fibre but because wood simply dampens vibrations that much better. Photographers, for whom weight is often an issue, waver between carbon fibre and aluminium - wanting the stabilising weight of aluminium, and the easier portability of carbon fibre. But for vibration reduction and stability, neither holds a candle to wood

Yes, go to Rome or any Italian city and you’ll see plenty of elegant high-heeled women zipping about in Vespas

I can tell you absolutely that you don't want to pilot a narrowboat in heels! Certainly not stilettos! You could probably get away with it in chunky heeled boots with 7 to 8 cm heels, but I wouldn't fancy it - not as a single-hander, unless you had someone to work the locks.

I’ve never tried driving in heels although I don’t think I’d find it a problem, except perhaps for worrying about damaging the heels. I can drive a manual easily - I learned in them, drive them all my life and indeed most of the cars here are manual. I can also drive a left or right hand drive vehicle, changing back and forth readily as I used to have to do on a regular basis when I travelled a lot

It’s always best to write what you know