A letter from a reader

At 64, I had worn sandshoes and socks to the beach for forty summers, and I had the ankles to prove it

Everything I have written this year would fit on the back of a raffle ticket, and most of it was our phone number. I am not a writer, and telling another woman what she ought to put on her feet is not something I go in for.

But three women stopped me about a pair of sandals at the markets in Airlie Beach, and one of them looked at my feet for so long that Graham thought she was going to ring the police. So I am writing it down once, properly, because it took me forty years to get there and it might take you less.

It started last Christmas, at the beach at Terrigal. The whole family was down on the sand, and I had kicked off my sandshoes to paddle with the grandkids. My granddaughter looked down at my feet, and then up at me, very puzzled.

Nan, why have your feet got socks on when you have not got socks on?

She was right. From halfway up my shins to the top of my feet I was brown as a saddle. Below that, two little white socks of skin, and a line round each ankle like a tide mark. Graham laughed so much he had to sit down on the esky.

I had worn white sandshoes and socks every summer since the kids were small. To the beach, to the shops, to the club, to my own daughter's engagement party. I had the most sensible feet in New South Wales and the whitest ankles anywhere south of Cairns.

Why I never wore sandals

It was not that I did not want to. Every summer I would stand at the shoe shop and look at them. But for a woman my age there only ever seemed to be two kinds.

There were thongs. Rubber thongs that slap along behind you all the way down the street, so everybody knows you are coming, and flick sand up the backs of your legs, and that you cannot wear anywhere with a tablecloth. And there were the other kind, the skinny little strappy ones with a buckle at every corner, that you have to sit down on the kerb to do up, and that look like they were made for a girl going dancing.

So I chose the sandshoes. Forty summers of them. And every February I had the tide marks back, and every Christmas somebody under ten noticed.

Then Carol came to lunch

Carol was the practice nurse when I was on the front desk, and she has been my friend for thirty years. She came over for lunch in October and sat on our back verandah with her legs crossed, and on her feet was a pair of red sandals I had never seen. Two wide bands crossed over the front and a strap round the back. A proper heel, but a solid one, not a pin.

I said, Carol, you have walked from the station in those. She said, I have, Di, and I am walking back in them too. Then she said they were from Thompson Sydney, a small Australian boutique, and they had a whole collection of summer sandals for women our age, and would I please stop staring at her feet because it was making Graham nervous.

I looked it up that night. There are about twenty designs in the collection. Some flat and gold, some woven, some a good deal louder than I would be. And then there was one in a light blue, and I sat and looked at it for a long time.

It is called the Valma. Light blue all over, with two wide bands crossed over the front so your toes just peep out, and one slim strap round the back of the heel with a little gold buckle you do up on the outside. Underneath there is a block heel. Not a high one, and not a thin one. The shop says it gives you a bit of height with real stability, and I am not going to argue with them.

That is the whole of it. Two bands across the front, one strap at the back. Nothing to sit on the kerb for.

Graham looked at them in the box and asked if they came with socks. I told him not anymore. Banjo took one look at them on the back verandah and barked, which is what he does to anything he has not been introduced to.

What happened at Airlie Beach

Graham has wanted to go fishing out of Airlie Beach for about twenty years, so this year we finally took a week up there. He went out on a charter one day and came back burnt and happy with one fish. The rest of the week was mine.

On the Saturday morning there are markets along the foreshore, under the palms, with the water that colour you think they must have painted. I had on a navy skirt and the Valma, and I had not packed a single pair of sandshoes. Graham noticed at the airport and did not say a word, which for Graham is a speech.

The woman on the mango stall asked first. She leaned right over her table to look and said, where are they from, love, I have been looking for blue ones for years. Then the young girl at the coffee van, who said they were exactly what her nan would wear and meant it as a compliment, so I took it as one.

And then there was a lady from Shute Harbour called Vonnie. She was about my age, in a big straw hat, and she stood beside me at the honey table and looked down at my feet for a very long time without saying anything. Graham told me afterwards he thought she was a store detective. Then she looked up and said it.

You do not see many women our age in blue shoes.

I said, no, you do not. She said, well, you ought to. And she wrote the name of the shop down on the back of her hand with my pen.

After the markets we walked the boardwalk round the water to Cannonvale and back, past the mangroves and all the boats, and I wore them the whole way. Then we went back to the apartment, and I did not take them off, and that evening we went to dinner at the sailing club, and I was still in them.

That was the part that got me. Forty years, I would have done the morning in sandshoes and carried a pair of good shoes in a plastic bag for dinner. The listing says they take you from the beach to dinner. I thought that was the sort of thing a shop says. It turned out to be just what I did.

Three things I have learned since

One. There is a third kind of sandal. I spent forty years thinking it was thongs or the fiddly ones. It was not. It was two wide bands and a strap, and I just had not looked properly.

Two. Your feet are allowed to be part of the outfit. I used to dress from the knees up and then put the sandshoes on as if my feet were somebody else's business. Now people look at my feet first, and for once I do not mind.

Three. Colour is not just for the young ones. I nearly bought them in something called nude. I am very glad I did not. Blue goes with navy, white, cream and denim, which is everything I own, and it made a woman at the markets stop me for a chat.

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 Valma is $96.95. It was $194.00.

My first thought was that at half price they would fall apart before the end of the markets. They did not. I have paid more than that for sandshoes that were mostly for show.

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 Cannonvale had written, “Wore them to my grandson's christening and then straight down the jetty for fish and chips. First time in years I have not carried a second pair of shoes in my handbag.” That was the one that decided it for me.

Jenny from over the road says hers would have been better in the red. I have told her she has not bought any.

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 sock line round your ankles every February, and you have stopped noticing it, take your shoes off tonight and have a look. Then give it ten minutes of an evening. There are about twenty designs in the collection, flat and heeled, gold and coloured, and you only need the one pair.

Not because a pair of sandals will change your life. They will not. But my granddaughter looked at my feet on Thursday at pickup and said, Nan, your feet are the same colour as the rest of you now, and I was more pleased about that than I have any right to be.

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

Forty summers in sandshoes. Nobody asked me about those once.

Dianne