A letter from a reader

At 64, every time I put on a pair of gold shoes my husband asked me if we were going somewhere, so they had spent nine years in a box on top of the wardrobe

The most I have put down on paper in the last ten years is the order for the Christmas ham, and the butcher still rings to check it. I am not a writer, and I have never thought it was my place to tell another woman what to put on her feet.

But three women stopped me about a pair of sandals on the Busselton Jetty, and one of them was a woman who has not said a kind word about my clothes since the day we met. So I am writing it down once, properly, in case it saves you a box on top of your wardrobe as well.

Gold was for occasions

I have always liked gold shoes. I just never wore them. In our house, gold shoes meant an occasion. A wedding, a fortieth, the practice Christmas party. You put them on at the last minute, you took them off under the table during the speeches, and you carried them home in your hand.

The last pair I bought was for my son's wedding, nine years ago. Very high, very thin, with straps that took ten minutes to do up. I wore them for the photos and the first dance and not one minute longer. Then they went back in the box with the tissue paper and up on top of the wardrobe, where they have been ever since, waiting for an occasion good enough.

And the trouble is Graham. If I so much as put on a pair of earrings on a Tuesday, he looks up from the paper and says it.

Are we going somewhere?

Forty years of marriage, and he has never once said it about a pair of sandshoes. So on ordinary days I wore ordinary shoes, and the gold stayed in the box.

Then I saw Carol's feet

Carol was the practice nurse when I was on the front desk, and she has been my friend for thirty years. In October she came round for a cuppa on a plain old Wednesday, in a T-shirt and her gardening trousers, and on her feet was a pair of flat gold sandals.

I said, Carol, where are you off to? She said, your back verandah, Di. Then she told me they were from Thompson Sydney, a small Australian boutique, and that she had worn them to the chemist that morning and nobody had asked her where she was going, they had only asked her where she got them.

I looked it up that night. There are twenty two designs in their summer sandal collection, flat ones and heeled ones, gold and coloured. And there was one pair that was flat and gold all over, and I sat and looked at it for a long time.

It is called the Aileen. One wide band across the front made of a little open gold lattice, like a net of tiny rings, with a soft scalloped edge, and your toes just showing at the end. A slim gold strap round the ankle with one small buckle on the outside. And underneath, a flat sole. Not a heel at all. The shop calls it flat and lightweight, and says it is meant to take you from morning coffee to drinks in the evening.

That was the part I had not understood for forty years. The gold was never the problem. The heel was. Gold on a flat sole is not an occasion. It is just a nice pair of shoes.

The first morning I wore them, Graham looked up from the paper and asked if we were going somewhere. I said, yes, to the shops for milk. He went back to the cricket scores.

What happened on the jetty

Every year Graham says we will go to Western Australia, and this spring we finally did. We flew to Perth, hired a little car and drove down south, and had a week in a holiday unit in Dunsborough with peppermint trees outside the window.

On the Thursday we drove to Busselton to walk the jetty. If you have not been, it goes out over the water for nearly two kilometres, and the sea underneath is so clear you can see the sand. You walk out along the old timber boards and there is a little train to bring you back if your legs give up. I had on a white skirt and the Aileen, and I had not packed a single other pair.

A woman on the bench at the far end, waiting for the train, asked first. She said, I have been watching those come up the jetty for the last ten minutes, love, where are they from. Then a young mum pushing a pram, who said they were exactly what she wanted for her own mother and could I hold still while she took a picture of my feet.

And then there was Colleen. Colleen is the widow of the man Graham did his plumbing apprenticeship under, and she has lived in Busselton for twenty years, and she came down to meet us for the walk. In all the years I have known her she has never passed one remark on anything I have worn, good or bad. She looked at my feet for most of the way back along the jetty, and then, right at the end by the steps, she said it.

Are you two going somewhere after this?

I said, no, Colleen, this is it. She said, well, you look like you are. And she wrote the name of the shop on the back of the train ticket.

We had lunch on the foreshore afterwards, under the big pines, and I did not go back to change. I wore them to the pub in Dunsborough that night, and the next morning down to the beach for a walk with my coffee. Forty years, I would have done the day in sensible shoes and kept the gold for the evening. This time there was nothing to change into.

Three things I have learned since

One. Gold does not need an occasion. I kept the gold for best for forty years, and best hardly ever came. A flat gold sandal on a Tuesday is not showing off. It is just a Tuesday with better shoes.

Two. It was the heel I did not like, not the gold. Every pair of gold shoes I ever owned came with a heel I could not walk in. Take the heel away and you are left with the part I liked all along.

Three. Gold goes with everything you already own. White, navy, denim, cream, the floral I wear to everything. I thought I would have to buy clothes to go with them. I have not bought a thing.

About the price

I sat on the other side of a lot of invoices in thirty years on the front desk, so I will tell you straight, the price made me suspicious.

The Aileen is $96.95. It was $194.00.

My first thought was that at half price the little gold rings would come undone before the end of the jetty. They did not. I paid more than that for the wedding heels, and they have done about four hours of work in nine years.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is nobody in the middle taking a cut, and they run a sale to move the season's stock. I read the reviews before I ordered, the way I imagine you are doing now. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if anything made me trust it more. One woman from Margaret River had written, “Bought them for my niece's wedding and wore them to the supermarket the very next morning. My husband asked if we were going out. I said I already was.” That was the one that decided it for me.

Jenny from over the road says gold is a bit much for the shops. I have noticed she has been looking at my feet every time I collect the mail.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were out on the back verandah with a cuppa and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If you have a pair of good shoes in a box on top of your wardrobe, waiting for an occasion that never quite turns up, go and have a look at them tonight. Then give it ten minutes of an evening. There are twenty two designs in the collection, flat and heeled, gold and coloured, and you only need the one pair you will actually wear.

Not because a pair of sandals will change your life. They will not. But I wore mine to school pickup on Thursday, and my granddaughter asked if I was going to a party, and I said, no, darling, I am already at one.

Two practical things. The sale is on now and the middle sizes go first. They come in AU 4.5 to AU 11, in gold. And with summer and the Christmas lunches coming, I would not leave it too long.

Nine years in a box waiting for an occasion. It turns out the occasion was the jetty.

Dianne