Actually, I don't really get the whole fashion thing full stop . . . my innate meanness preventing me from ever shopping till I drop . . .but I especially don't do shoes. If they were warm and waterproof, I'd be quite content to wear shoeboxes. Buying anything else in the footwear department is, to my mind, torture almost beyond endurance. Buying shoes for kids is the worst hell on earth but that is another day's dirge. And at least when they're for the kids, nobody gets to see your holey socks (see 'innate meanness', above).

In spite of this, I have somehow managed to amass quite a collection of shoes. I currently have . . . count 'em . . . three pairs of boots, one pair each of trainers, sandals and slippers and three pairs of shoes that I can't really describe.

One pair, I will concede, was bought in the sort of moment of madness that seems to happen to other women a lot but rarely seizes me. They are impossibly high, horribly uncomfortable and absolutely gorgeous. So maybe I did once get the whole shoe thing, but it was fleeting. These days, I have nine pairs of shoes, the most I've ever had. I know women . . . normal, non-Imelda Marcos women . . . who have over a hundred.

Presumably, when the shoebox collection leaflet comes home from their kids' schools at Christmas, they breathe a sigh of relief. Me, I have to go into Korky's and beg for boxes.

But I am not the only female in my household and gradually, The Small Girl is catching up with my grown-up collection of shoes. We weren't exactly poor when I was eight years old, but back then, I owned a pair of shoes and a pair of canvas plimsolls that met all my physical education needs. In summer, I had a pair of sandals but by then the shoes would have worn out, so strictly speaking, I still only had the one pair. The plimsolls, on the other hand, ran and ran until our toes popped out the top. I know people complain about kids not doing enough PE in school now, but we barely did it at all.

Once a week, each class was summoned to the hall to make itself as small as possible, as tall as possible and as wide as possible and that was about it.

On a Monday morning, we also enjoyed a dance class . . . 15 minutes in the company of a sweet old lady called Mrs Brady (I know, I know) whose speciality, by a happy coincidence, was "the ruler dance".

You could do Mrs Brady's class in your plimsolls or, if your parents didn't stretch to canvas, your slippers. You couldn't do it in both. I seem to remember one bold girl trying and Sr Kevin shouting at her from her sanctuary in the room where they kept the red stuff they painted on cut knees.

Anyway, that was then and this is an Ireland where, all of a sudden, people fancy themselves in the dancing department. I'm too ashamed to admit how much we pay for The Small Girl to take dance classes (though it's lucky I'm not a shoe person or we'd have to remortgage the house), but I'm happy to divulge details of the note she brought home demanding that she spend almost a hundred euro on jazz boots and tap shoes.

After a great deal of sighing (me) and begging (her) and eventual agreement that the Communion money would have to be drawn down, she and I ended up in a little shop in Amiens Street full of impossibly tiny ballroom dancing outfits for about a grand a throw (who knew? ) and a man who knows jazz boots.

When he asked which kind we'd like, I admitted that prior to that weekend, I didn't know that such a thing as jazz boots existed. For the record, they are black runners. Not quite plimsolls, but I'd still bet she could do the class in her slippers. Sometimes, where shoes are concerned, I think we're all being sold a (hush) pup.

Reluctant Valentine The Boy had a perfectly miserable Valentine's Day on account of an ardent admirer who has been making his life hell of late. The first we knew of her suit was when her brother told The Small Girl his sister fancied her brother (keep up). The news, gleefully received by both mother and elder daughter, was, however, a cause of profound sadness in The Boy, who protested that he hadn't asked for this burden at all. Now she pursues him (literally) around the yard and on Valentine's Day, she did a sort of kamikaze run at him with a view to planting a kiss on his smooth cheek. He is not a fast mover but I understand he displayed a fleetness of foot in that yard that may yet have him shouldered around the allweather pitch at St Jude's. Of course, it ruined his day and seems to be on the way to ruining his life. Me, I think I'm beginning to enjoy Valentine's Day all over again. Others, though, were less satisfied.

On Valentine's Eve, out with two singletons, we were accosted in a restaurant by a sign ordering us to "book early to avoid disappointment on Valentine's Day". Surely "get a boyfriend to avoid disappointment on Valentine's Day" would have constituted more constructive advice. But these days, it's all about money and jazz boots.