Involuntary laughing from a health professional is usually a bad sign.

My sister was stricken. Honestly, it was as if I had told her I had cancer. "You're being very blase about this, " she said, "No high shoes? Ever?"

"That's right, " I said starting to feel a little put out she was getting so het up . . . like it was my fault.

"What will you do if you have to go to a wedding, or a function?" "I have one pair of black platforms that are okf" I said, realising how pathetic that sounded. "Well, " she finished, "I don't think you realise how serious this is." She left me sitting in my mother's living room looking at my Nike Air soles, and came back one more time with, "You'll regret it, " she said finally implying that this flatfootedness was somehow a decision that I had come to. A voluntary embracement of sensible shoes, a deliberate attention-seeking veer towards middle age. A premature plea to be taken seriously . . . like letting your grey grow through in your 30s.

My sister loves shoes. She wears slingback kitten heels, and she colour co-ordinates them . . .that sort of thing. I have tried, over the years to love shoes but I just can't. I always get them wrong.

Even when I could wear high heels . . . I chose cheap high black courts. It seemed a waste trying to match anything else. And then I always get it wrong. I have fat ankles and chunky calves . . . upside down legs my similarly afflicted cousin tells me . . . so everything strappy makes me look like I'm in drag from the knees down.

Last year, I made a final attempt at classy footwear and on the advice of my classy agent went to a posh designer footwear emporium where a coiffed sales assistant pressured me into splurging a horrific amount of money on a pair of red brogues. Tragically, they do not fit my 'special' insoles and so sit in their posh fabric shoe bag glowering up mournfully every morning like me like a couple of needy puppies. I bloody hate them.

It seems to me that the world truly is divided into women who love shoes and women who are indifferent to them. Women who love wear Jimmy Choo and crave Manolos, indifferent women wear whatever they can pick up that looks vaguely passable with what they are wearing from any shop that sells them for less than 50. Indifferent women often end up like me, tortured after years of wearing cheap plastic stilletoes and crappy supermarket trainers . . . in old-lady comfortable lace-ups before their time.

The thing is, I keep trying to bring myself to care, but I can't. It's a relief actually. It's one less decision to make in the mornings. And yet despite my inate indifference I still fear I may be missing out. Imagine. The world is so consumer driven that I feel pressure to want to want shoes. Now that's what you call a 'middle class problem'.