Thursday, June 11

Somebody really hates feet

The chap is obviously showing a clean pair of heels but then I remember the quote, “He who talks by the yard and thinks by the inch, gets kicked by the foot”. The puns you can come up on foot and feet and toes and all that are legion but i wouldnt even dip my toe into this morass. But still, read this: An extract:

Men's feet, in particular, make me squirm and gag: the mottled colouring, the sparse hair, the little toe that has been crushed into the one next to it over the years so that it has turned and bent and cuddles up against it now, sadly, as if trying to spoon an unwilling lover, the yellowed, cracked toenails, and the fully blackened one on the right biggy from toe-punting a goalpost 14 years ago. How can bringing these out in public be considered acceptable?

Do go read them full article, very amusing.

Mind you, I play a game on the tube whenever its summer and I see people wearing sandals or slippers.  Do you know you can tell much about a person by looking at their feet? How their toes look, their heels, how they stand, a ton of information is provided by the feet.

And there is nothing like a dainty well maintained foot to make you interested in the lady. I recently read H Rider Haggard’s She. That reminds me of somebody :), but the point I want to mention here with respect to this post is the section relating to the foot. I quote:

Presently his face brightened, and with an exclamation he pulled something forth which was caked in dust; which he shook on to the floor. It was covered with the remains of a rotting rag, which he undid, and revealed to my astonished gaze a beautifully shaped and almost white woman's foot, looking as fresh and firm as though it had but now been placed there.

"Thou seest, my son, the Baboon," he said, in a sad voice, "I spake the truth to thee, for here is yet one foot remaining. Take it, my son, and gaze upon it."

I took this cold fragment of mortality in my hand and looked at it in the light of the lamp with feelings which I cannot describe, so mixed up were they between astonishment, fear, and fascination. It was light, much lighter I should say than it had been in the living state, and the flesh to all appearance was still flesh, though about it there clung a faintly aromatic odour. For the rest it was not shrunk or shrivelled, or even black and unsightly, like the flesh of Egyptian mummies, but plump and fair, and, except where it had been slightly burnt, perfect as on the day of death--a very triumph of embalming.

Poor little foot! I set it down upon the stone bench where it had lain for so many thousand years, and wondered whose was the beauty that it had upborne through the pomp and pageantry of a forgotten civilisation --first as a merry child's, then as a blushing maid's, and lastly as a perfect woman's. Through what halls of Life had its soft step echoed, and in the end, with what courage had it trodden down the dusty ways of Death! To whose side had it stolen in the hush of night when the black slave slept upon the marble floor, and who had listened for its stealing? Shapely little foot! Well might it have been set upon the proud neck of a conqueror bent at last to woman's beauty, and well might the lips of nobles and of kings have been pressed upon its jewelled whiteness.

Pretty interesting, eh? that section talked to me. Then again, even a personage like Leonardo da Vinci said, “The human foot is a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art”. I agree, then again, as somebody said, your toe is the part of the body which you use to find furniture legs in the dark. Bah!

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