Doc Martens and me

I have had a lifelong love affair with DMs. I was a tomboy from a very early age, and always craved clumpy lumberjack boots while my sisters were easing their way into white stilettoes. The minute I made it to tertiary education I was into my first pair of DM's - black buff leather with multiple yellow eyelets - and I wore them with everything. Short skirts, long skirts, smart dresses, grungy t shirts and cutaways, shorts, swimsuits, sleepwear, the lot. I wore them out again and again - don't believe that PR guff that DM's last you years. That only happens if you're a supermodel and wear them once to a Vogue party and then not for another 6 months at least - although it is the case that you can replace the evil smelling weird rubbery soles if you haven't totalled them too much and most times I had worn them to holes, totally beyond repair. But hey, the upside of this meant I got to experiment with different colours, fabrics and shapes. I went through a bright red phase and a bright blue phase and a purple phase. Then they brought out the flowery ones and my happiness was complete. It stayed that way until one day in my early thirties I was standing in the tube wearing my flowery DM shoes, and the doors opened and a crowd of pre-pubescent girls got on, half of them wearing flowery DM boots, and one of them caught sight of my shoes, and her face fell. In that moment her flowery DM boots became TOTALLY uncool, because some ancient female commuter had defiled them. I took the hint and gave them away, and for a long time, that was it. But then Nigella Lawson exploded on to the scene with a clothes swap session with Caitlin Moran. One look at Nigella wearing brief denim shorts and patent leather DM shoes with yellow eyelets and I was sold. Back on track. Straight into the DM store, and five minutes later out again, the proud owner of black patent leather DM shoes with yellow eyelets and all. Nigella is older than I am, and frankly away from the cameras she probably wouldn't be seen dead in the shorts, the woolly black tights or the DMs, but it's too late. They are back in my life, and teamed, somewhat rebelliously, with my Angela Merkel style black trousers and boxy bright jackets that I wear for my Euro meetings (there is an explicit dress code for Brussels meetings, but that's a subject for another time - it requires me to summon sufficient will to live...). The moment when I stand up from my chair after a meeting, walk round to hand over my business card or shake someone's hand, and they look down and see their reflections in my bovver shoes, is a moment to treasure, over and over again.