Making a point with fancy footwear
8th August, 2006
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What caused me to panic was the memory of Nancy Antonelli's massive bosom heaving across the room. "Get them off!" I shrieked as my fiancée's older sister stood there in her coat and boots and wondered in what particular mind-altering substance I had indulged. "The boots! Get the boots off!" I cried, moving towards her. Misreading my intentions as amorous, she backed towards the door. "No!" I yelled as she lunged for the handle.
"Get off me, you psycho!" she yelled, giving me a gentle push which sent me flying across the room. Making a mental note to take up weightlifting and bodybuilding at the earliest opportunity, I crawled to my feet.
Ah yes, I thought. Nancy. The lady who was and still is a close friend of my mother. It was some years ago and we'd just had the pine floors of the then family home sanded and polished when Nancy came to visit. "Take off your shoes," my father said firmly as she arrived at our front door, preceded as always by a metre of cleavage and a cloud of perfume. He was too late. The "darlings" had already started and my father's protests were overwhelmed by a frenzy of cheek-kissing, more "darlings", several "sweethearts" and a dozen embraces.
"Where's Marc?" she asked as the greeting ecstasy level in the room began to fall.
As I spoke I looked up the hallway, down which Nancy's progress as she tottered along on her high heels could be traced by the neat, twin line of holes they had punched in the surface of our new floors. It was a while ago but the recollection remained fresh. "I'm sorry," I said to my fiancée's sister as she stood holding her boots and wondering whether she should throw just one or both of them at me. I have become, I will concede, a little obsessive about our new, shiny wooden floors and maintain a constant state of red alert against any attack by high heels. It was also necessary to buy a rug. Everyone said we needed one, a white fluffy one, so we went out and bought one. "It's too small," said my fiancée as I selected it. "No way. It's perfect," I replied. We took it home and the next day I took it back and bought the bigger one. I asked my fiancée was she ever tired of being right and she said it didn't bother her. We love the rug. It looks like the sort of rug you should do things on, eating spaghetti bolognaise not being one of them. Its arrival has caused a significant rise in my already impressive level of paranoia, for food has a habit of leaping off my plate and the thought of trying to extract a chunk of sauce-sodden bolognaise from the fluffy tendrils of the rug does not bear contemplation. In the past, I have been known for eating dinner in front of the television set, my excuse for this being that I felt faintly ridiculous sitting alone at a table built for six and talking to myself. The truth was that I simply enjoyed the blokeyness of sprawling in front of the television and eating, even if it did mean I had to spread beach towels around me in an attempt to reduce the effects of the collateral damage from food fallout. The rug, however, is now in front of the TV, which would force me to sit as far as possible from it with my arm wrapped protectively around my plate as particles of food, drawn to its white fluffiness, attempt to land on its pristine surface. The rug has become the high altar of the living room, worshipped from afar. Is that a mark I can see on the floor? Where's that mop? Perhaps I'm not getting out enough. |
