I’M A woman who loves shoes – which I realise is a bit of a “sky is blue” statement, for I’ve yet to meet one who doesn’t.

And as a shoe aficionado I, in common with many females, am prepared to go to certain lengths to suffer for my art.

The most vivid examples ingrained in my memory involve walking home from the pub on Christmas Eve, 1999, in bejewelled strappy sandals – while it was snowing – and almost needing a trip to A&E following a lengthy outing of spectacular tan platforms during one Grand National.

But we all reach a certain age – around the late twenties, perhaps – when a trigger occurs in your brain that, once activated, involves no going back.

This is the result of an accumulation of so many blisters, pain and numbness – sensations unabated even by those one or two modest glasses of wine (ahem) – that your approach to footwear shifts . . . ever so slightly.

It means, I’m afraid, that you do something that used to be alien to your shoe-loving vocabulary. You think ahead.

You ponder the following equation: Exactly how many hours am I going to be on my feet and exactly how many minutes could I feasibly cope in these bunion-inducers?