fajrdrako | The House of Stark: Winter is Coming...

Cold day today. I went to an appointment with our nutritionist, Rachel Hewitt, with

maaseru. She dropped me off at O'Connor and Isabella, and I walked home from there. Without gloves.

I have gloves, mostly warm winter ones. A few weeks ago I bought the gloves of my dreams from Costco, only $11.95, streamlined and cosy. Second time out, I lost the left one. In dudgeon, I've been looking for new gloves ever since, the type that are best for slightly-above-freezing weather.

There aren't many places to buy gloves between Isabella and Third on Bank. The sports story only had heavy-duty warm ones, or fingerless ones with rubber on them, for cycling. Shoppers only had fuzzy ones. But Pom-Pom was having a sale, one of those annoying sales where you get 60% off one item if you buy two things. If you buy only one pair of gloves, which was what I wanted, it doesn't mean you get one glove for 60% off and the other at regular price.

And they had perfect gloves. Gloves that match the jacket I bought in Rye, which I happened to be wearing today. Gloves that fit perfectly: suede gloves. At $29.95 they cost twice what the Costco gloves cost, but they're prettier. I decided to buy them, and then browsed. Considered scarves, but they didn't have the perfect colour.

I wasn't, I really wasn't, considering shoes. But then I saw they had the perfect shoes. And seriously, I needed shoes. I'd been wearing the same pair since I broke my arm in June. One of the nicest things about them was that they don't take shoelaces, and since I think I might have fallen by tripping on a shoelace, I feel a little more comfortable with laceless shoes.

But sadly, no pair of shoes lasts forever, and in more than six months of wearing them (since I bought them more than a year ago) I've walked in them almost constantly, including up and down hills in Bristol and through museums in Paris.

I noticed a few weeks ago that my back was aching again, after having stopped for a while. Then I noticed a pattern: my back ached when I'd been walking in those shoes. Then I remembered my doctor telling me that, because of the shape of my feet, and because I am prone to plantar fasciitis, I should buy new shoes every six months. I never do, because I'm cheap. But if it saves backache, it's worth every penny.

So I had to replace those shoes, but thought it would be just about impossible. Then here they were at Pom-Pom, shoes just like I'd been hoping for.