Do they maketh the man?

One good thing about living in the French countryside is that I no longer have to worry about buying smart clothes for work. I used to be quite into my Monday to Friday clothes. I always liked to spend quite a lot on bags and shoes (well I still do really) and liked to have a wide choice of work outfits, usually in shades of black, grey or navy. Bet you can tell I didn't work in the media!

I'm much more casual these days but still like to co-ordinate colours. We see some really badly dressed people in our area. I just don't understand these people - do they not have mirrors or do they just get dressed in the dark or do they simply not care about how they look?

The first thing I notice about people are their shoes. I've always had this habit. Shoes are very important to me. Perhaps because I've never been what you might call dainty but I do have very small feet. I'm a size 3 (36) but I do fit quite often into a 2.5 (35) and have often bought quite pretty kids' shoes. I've cut down so much these days on my shoe habit. At one time I had over a hundred pairs but these days it's down to about forty. I don't consider that a lot actually. That only includes four pairs of boots for goodness sake. Hardly Imelda's equal.

As for bags, well they're down to about 8. Nothing really. My ' best bag' is a large Mulberry briefcase only there's not much call for its use in Brittany. No files or folders to peruse on my travels these days. And it did use to make my shoulder quite sore, even when empty.

I hope I still love shoes as much when I'm a little old lady hobbling around. Maybe I'll co-ordinate my walking sticks with my outfits then. I could hang them on hooks around the wall - the hooks would also have to be the same colour as the sticks themselves. Now that's what I call style!