Beautiful lies and beautiful toes - how bare do you go?

Just been to see Audrey Tautou in the French film Beautiful Lies – came home still aflow with laughter and romance and am planning on taking the whole household kit and caboodle comprising husband, three resident Drama Queens and two Scottish Exchange students who are in residence for a couple of nights to see it. After steady diet of okay ish films – this one was like quaffing a cold gin and tonic after a monotonous diet of thick milkshakes – however perhaps that should be like a vodka and tonic given the way all the characters down vodka in moments of stress. Am in fact considering taking up vodka as drink of choice as even after a bender Audrey still looks unbelievably glamorous and attractive.

Realise I will never be true Aussie as in contrast to the Drama Queens and most of the local male population I do tend to wear shoes if I am popping up to the shops or indeed anywhere that qualifies as out of the house. A couple of days ago, in pouring rain and 12 oC, I met a man up at our local shops, fully dressed but in bare feet. Considering I was clad in my favourite leopard skin wellies it is hardly as if I was setting the sartorial footwear bar particularly high, but whilst I admire the practicalities of the idea that if you’re going to get wet anyway why not just paddle around in your bare feet, I was puzzled by why you would then also wear long trousers and shirt – the over all look was of someone who had absent-mindedly forgotten to put on shoes.

We do live in a beachside suburb, albeit a harbour beach rather than surf, so it is quite normal to see people wandering in and out of shops clad in swimmers, towel and no shoes – behaviour that would have led to detention by the police or mental health doctors in America. The DQs and most Aussies don’t think twice about setting off with bare tootsies for the day to the extent you come across notices in pubs and restaurants saying shirts and shoes will be required. My most extreme encounter to date was on the escalator in David Jones the upmarket department store in the middle of Sydeny. I looked down and noticed that the beautifully dressed man next to me was sporting bare feet hovering nonchalantly over the revolving metal teeth of the escalator – quite enough to make my bottom hurt.

My brother in law once walked over Sydney Harbour Bridge with no shoes on – a satorial event that palls into insignificance compared to the fact he didn’t have any clothes on either other than his boxer shorts as he had locked himself out of our apartment – history doesn’t relate what he was doing prancing round the doorstep in his boxers in the first place but I’m sure there was a good explanation. Testimony to what a laid back city Sydney is that you can stroll across one of the national icons, through the central business district and into your brother’s office wearing the modern equivalent of a loin cloth and no one will stop you or even raise an eyebrow.