Sometimes I think my life is like one long entrance hall lined with shoes. Like arriving at one of those house parties in which the host greets you with a warm smile and the words “Shoes off, please!” And we smile back, and say,” Yes, Yes, course!” It’s not as if it has just taken me three and a quarter hours to decide that these shoes are absolutely the right ones to go with this specific ensemble that actually took me four hours and a sleepless night piecing together. No, that’s fine. In fact the shoe moment is all but over when the door to the venue has actually been opened. That’s the moment, right there, the pinnacle, the mountainous peak of the shoe wearing notion, the exact moment the makers, the designers, the sellers strive for, gone in a flash. Beyond that they might as well be used as logs for the fire. Once they’ve peaked on the threshold, your feet are on their own. Hosts should provide a little patch of red carpet so one can pose and perhaps take a selfie before being handed a pair of old socks and being allowed in.

No, it’s not funny or even ironic, dear friends. It’s a pain in the sequined arse. There should at least be a little pre-warning, so instead of going to Kurt Geiger we can book in for a dead skin scrub instead. Just a little “foot” note even, that says, ‘Bring a bottle and/or a pair of slippers’. Nothing will match the moment you walk into the living room of one such persecutor’s house with a glass of Prosecco to find several glamorous people tucking their feet under the sofa or behind cupboards, making outlandish gestures with their hands to divert attention from their fungal nail infection and the sense of relief when someone else walks in with a hole in their tights and a bright red face. Safety in numbers. No one can take their eyes off the child’s beanbag in the corner, thinking how many more espresso martinis will it take to not make it odd when you take the plunge and immerse your sweaty feet in squidginess?

The only good thing about those sort of parties is that everyone gets pissed as quickly as possible so they forget they even have feet. In a way, they’re actually the most fun. Sometimes it even turns into a celebration of feet. People give way to abandon and actually start expressing themselves with their feet rather than their hands. By the end of the night every reveller realises their feet are actually their best asset and vows to henceforth liberate them as often as possible and go barefoot through life. Which is a saving grace because upon actually leaving the party no one can ever actually find both shoes and would much rather brave the naked tippy-toes to the taxi than suffer Hairy Dan’s Docksiders.

So, in a very roundabout way this is a little like my life: an endless entrance hall of shoes in all styles and sizes, and days seemingly spent trying them all on, trying to get through to the bespoke pair of glittery slippers to finally gallivant about happily, with neither blood nor blisters.  I love a shoe analogy. Shoes! Currently, for example, I am wearing in a pair of muddy boots due to a dalliance with Dorset.

I have come to Dorset to recoup, to gather the semblance of sanity I am hoping is still knocking about in the old tin box upstairs; to write, to breathe, to walk, to oil the joints, to calm the heady mix of fear and loathing, to find clarity once more. London, I love you, but you are cruel sometimes and I am bruised and worn down and need time out to lick my wounds before running onto the battlefield once more, such is the artsy-fartsy path I am drawn to. And like a complicated lover that gives all the pain and all the pleasure, one is constantly lured back, because it is everything, isn’t it? It is all of life: sweet and salty, hot and sour, birth and death, drought and a storm, hibernation and a hunt, mania and muteness. All the senses are pricked and life is on the precipice, and all you have is hope in your heart and a self-flagellating stick.

So here I am in Dorset on the precipice of the ocean, and it is absurd as it is glorious, as it is lost as it is found. Already my faith in humanity has been restored and all it took was a conversation about teapots in a charity shop.