Before and After

My sister has a pair of shoes that she loves… these brown ones. Apparently they are lovely to dance in. Though I can barely walk in anything with a heel, much less dance… even jiggle. I am more of a comfortable shoes kind of woman. (This is Daughter modelling the brown shoes. Being thirteen, Daughter longs for the day when she can wear shoes with heels.)

Anyway, for my sister’s birthday I agreed to get them copied here in Bangkok. The brown ones keep breaking and being repaired (though I have since discovered that she slips them on and off without undoing them: WHAT else would you expect? I said, being the sensible sister.) My sister says that they are the most comfortable shoes in the world. She said that she would love to have them in red; bright, beautiful, hooker red.

So I got them made for her at Liu’s Bootery underneath the Asoke skytrain stop on Sukhumvit Road. And when I went to the UK recently I took the new shoes.

What do you think?

My sister is fab

I’m quite conventional so I was intrigued, though not entirely surprised, by the idea that my sister would get involved in burlesque dancing. She dances with a group who call themselves The Teasemaids. I was preparing to move to Bangkok when my sister started this career so I didn’t have an oportunity to see her doing it until last summer when I was back in the UK.

I went with her to the Volupté Lounge near Chancery Lane for Afternoon Tease. Most of the audience was women. I sat on a table with my sister’s daytime colleagues and we had proper old fashioned English tea: sandwiches and cakes, oh and champagne!

But I was a bit shocked; maybe I’m not just conventional but also a prude? It was very daring of her, but also funny. It made me realise how very, very different we are. I’m a little uncomfortable even taking my bra off even in changing rooms. Was that what shocked me? That my sister could? Although my sister and I of the same genetics she takes after Dad’s side of the family (straight up and down, small tits) I take after Mum’s (curvaceous, tendency to put on weight, big tits.) So taking my bra off in public would probably put lives in danger: maybe only toddlers and dwarves’ lives, but nonetheless…


This Friday she is organising Ooh La La at Bush Hall, in Shepherd’s Bush and I am wishing her all the good fortune from over here in Bangkok.