Boots

(To Nanju who always offered to help me shop)

One of the toughest parts of being abroad for me is dressing right. And by this I mean being comfortable in what I wear while not seeming like a complete fashion disaster. And somehow I never seem to get it right. Add to this the inability to communicate with shop assisstants and you have several frustrating weekends spent in the city centre unsure of what to buy, how to wear and how much to spend.

I had been putting off the hunt for boots because I knew it would be one of the more difficult things to buy, especially in Italy, where every woman seems to be wearing a beautiful pair of boots that are perfectly matched with her bag, coat, hat and gloves. But my cold feet (pun intended) got the better of me and I finally dragged myself to the fancy city centre of Turino. I had spent most of last week paying close attention to womens' boots and had concluded that knee length black boots would be the ideal pick. I could wear them over most clothes and they seemed reasonably chic.

But of course there was more to it. I still had to choose between boots with heals versus flat ones, boots that fit snug versus those that hung loose around your calves and boots with buckles versus those with zippers. Four hours, twenty pairs of boots and several unpleasant shop assistants later I finally zeroed in on a pair of black ankle length boots because I realised that I feel like a gladiator in the knee length ones. But I think I mostly chose the boots because the two middle aged women at the store were really nice to me and even managed to communicate in broken English.

One week with my new boots and how do I feel? Well...they're too snug to tuck my jeans into them and too loose to drape my formal trousers over them. Plus they have these tie ups that are always coming loose. So they probably score quite low on the fashion scale. But they keep me warm, which (I have been telling myself) is what really matters.

Lesson learned: If you need to buy boots in Italy, take a friend who's a shopper and can speak Italian