Winkle-pickers

I think it's time I employed a personal shopper. On a recent trip to London, I spent half an anxious hour in Richmond buying a collection of items that broke every clothes-shopping rule. They were the wrong size, the wrong pattern, the wrong style and, of the six items purchased, only two could be worn together. I even broke my own rules: will I wear the ruffled blouse with the flower pattern, or the brown and black hoop-striped woollen two-piece?

Even as I paid for the items, I knew my new size-16 bum would stretch the skirt to breaking point, and would make me look like a barrel on legs. But the thin French woman in the shop was so full of admiration when I stepped out of the changing room in the barrel she even put her hand up to her mouth. At the time I took this gesture to be an indication of her delight at the vision in front of her. But on reflection, a few days later, I now think she was probably trying to hide a smirk.

The brown woollen suit with the long jacket was bought to hide the size-16 bum, and it looked rather dashing beneath the bright lights of the shop. As I strode around the changing cubicle, striking poses to the strains of Charles Aznavour singing ‘She’, I could see myself walking along the Left Bank of the Seine in my new suit, which I planned to accessorize in a clever Parisian way.

I now realize the brown suit is beyond help. Attempts to cheer it up are rejected. It is suffering from clinical depression. Only a course of antidepressants and ten sessions of Gestalt therapy can help the thing. The multi-coloured woollen scarf with the beading and sequins appealed to me at once – as it might to a toddler. Indeed, a toddler had possibly made it at nursery school. This scarf can be worn with none of my new clothes. And I suspect my old black clothes won't want to be seen dead with it.

I can't bear to think about the cowboy boots the French woman was so ecstatic about when I tried them on. ‘So flattering to the foot,’ she said excitedly. I should describe these boots. In one respect they are your bog-standard cowboy boots: black leather, a comfortable stack heel and calf length. What made them attractive to me were the long snakeskin-patterned winkle-picker toes. I was fortunate enough to be a teenager during the winkle-picker era, when social cachet depended on the length and pointedness of the leather at the end of your feet. These shoes are what keep present-day chiropodists in business.

So why did I, a supposedly mature fifty-four-year-old woman, stop even for a moment to admire these boots? It was the French woman who made me try them on. ‘I 'ave a pair at home,’ she (no doubt) lied. So far, I have only worn these boots in my room at Pope's Grotto Hotel in Twickenham. They almost broke my neck. The winkle-pickers are inflexible and force one to plod along in a flat-footed way, as if crossing snowy terrain in snowshoes. The boots are going back for a refund, as is the flower-patterned, ruffled blouse. I am, however, stuck with the dull brown suit and the striped woollens because these have been worn once (and already look years old).

Will a personal shopper save me from myself? Or will she look at my tired face, make assumptions and go out on to the shop floor to select a collection of pleasant clothes suitable for the young pensioner? Perhaps I should give in gracefully and accept that plain black, white and grey are the only colours I should wear.

As for sequinned scarves, the damn sequins go every-where. Which reminds me of a story told by a woman of my acquaintance. She grew suspicious that her husband was having an affair when she saw him in the shower with a single sequin stuck to his bum. He could not satisfactorily explain its presence there. Since she owned no sequinned clothing, relations between them grew strained and eventually reached breaking point.

PS: You may have wondered about the derivation of the name Pope's Grotto Hotel. So did I. I asked a local taxi driver. ‘It's named after the Pope, who hid there when it were against the law to be a Catholic,’ he informed me. Wrong, as it turned out. Pope's Grotto Hotel is named after Alexander Pope, the poet, who lived nearby. How we deceive ourselves.