Gone are those days when my hooves – tad tall for the day’s purposes – made odd Christmas-tree shaped marks in the pavement on a hot summer day. Banished, are the thoughts that fleeted into my post-adolescent, under-cooked brain, teasing with a very useless idea of purchasing stripper heels with a 3-inch perspex platform and a goldfish residing under each foot (or dollar-note tips, whichever). You know, kids and their insecurities, one of mine were: short, Asian legs. My early twenties was in fact, punctuated with poor choice in footwear: cheap ‘leather’ glued with ‘wood’, and heels generally too high for my/my immediate surroundings’ own good. And to think of all the things I could’ve done had I been a little closer to earth – all the buses I could’ve caught, the nights I could’ve slept indoors had I not given up on walking home on the bloody stumps I called feet…

Perhaps it’s life’s Yin & Yang, but now I own a UberXL-load of sneakers in varying shapes and sizes, a hefty bunch Nike’s – naturally. All made for a ‘track’ or another (the Cortez originally a running shoe), but worn beating down London pavements and chasing buses (and catching them for once). Insecurities are re-allocated (cellulite, taxes), but I’m glad to say that for the past few years I’ve been sleeping indoors every night, thanks to this obsession for trainers. The Nike ‘Cortez‘, returning since its original debut in 1972 and then 1994 in Forrest Gump, is new to the family. No plans yet to run cross-country in them but here’s three ways you can at least get to the next meeting without hailing down a black cab.