We are in Aston Hall. It’s a kind of stately home type thing nearby. I bought us tickets to an event whereby you walk around the place by candlelight, and, if you’re me, pretend you are a Victorian servant/princess.
We get out of the car and I hear a clunk. “I think I’ve done something,” I say uselessly. I am not a car person. Top Gear is the worst programme on television.
“Hmm?” MindReader says.
“I think maybe I pinged the seatbelt into the window!” I say. “There was a noise.”
“I put my coat on the roof – could’ve been that?” he says.
“Aaahh,” I say, “probably.”
We go and queue up and a man pretending to be a Victorian lieutenant ‘entertains’ us in the queue.
“My feet hurt,” I say to MindReader. I am wearing beautiful stiletto shoe/boots that I ADORE.
“Now you can’t complain about that!” MindReader says. “You said they wouldn’t hurt because they were suede when you bought them…”
I smile. I didn’t consider that the shoe wasn’t ALL suede and some of it would be hard shoe-material that digs in.
“They’re worth it,” I say.
The lieutenant and another man have a pretend sword fight. MindReader, already reluctant and not very into candles anyway, is positively seething after the audience-interaction ‘who can cheer the loudest’ shit games.
I give him a kiss on the cheek. “Billygean,” he says, turning suddenly.
A sign behind us reads:
High and stiletto heals are not permitted in Aston Hall.
I know, right? No explanation of what to do if you HAVE been stupid enough to wear stilettos to a casual event. Do you take them off, and wear – gasp – shoes from ‘spares’ like in gym at school? Or do you go home, escorted off the premises while you cite the Sale of Goods Act?
Some of these thoughts must have played across my features for MindReader puts his arm around me and smiles. “I’m sure it’s fine,” he says.
We get to the front of the queue. I thrust our tickets into the lady’s hand.
“Now I just need to give you these back,” she says, “this has your address on and you don’t want me knowing that do you?”
I gulp and look at MindReader, my expression clearly reading no, because I am going to damage the 700 year-old floorboards and get a hefty bill through in the post.
I shuffle in, trying not to make too many high-heeled noises. “Never commit a crime,” MindReader says, laughing behind me. “You are the shiftiest I have ever seen you.”
We walk quickly around the Hall, me often side-stepping like a cartoon burglar while MindReader goads me in various ways such as “quick, you don’t want to get arrested!” and “they used to behead people you know…” all the time with a broad smile on his face.
We rush round a massive building in about ten minutes which I suspect suited MindReader just fine. He buys me a mulled wine (to calm me down, I think).
We get back to the car and I see my beautiful iPhone lying in the mud. So that’s what that noise was. I thanks the gods of technology a few times while I retrieve it. MindReader calls me jammy.
We drive home, and when we get in I throw up the wine.
i want a proper picture of the pretty boots
Absolutely 100% pure BG goodness, no doubt. The mansion looks lovely, like you’d want to take a dinner there sometime at one of those tables that is so impossibly long that you have to phone the person at the other end in order to talk.
Yes, a close-up picture of the boots, please!
http://img154.yfrog.com/i/94zs.jpg/
Aahh!!
[...] spotty paper as I listened to Ella FitzGerald. I remember Aston Hall by Candlelight, also known as the night I ruined a very old building with my shoes, the mulled wine and the frozen, cracked mud lining the eloborate [...]
Uncomfortable gorgeous boots, it reminds me of a friends episode where Monica has the same problem! While i was reading it i imagined you might’ve had to wear the blue carrier bag/ crime scene type foot things. Did you ever post a picture of the boots? ; )
Yes see comment by me above!