Heel

So, you know how the skin around your heel can get thickened and have cracks in it? No? Well, lucky you. You’re probably young.

There are particular places - like magazines read by people over 55 - in which you may find advertisements for things like hearing aids, stair lifts, and podiatry treatments. I always used to filter out the ads for products and treatments advertised for cracked skin. Safely encased within men’s shoes and boots, in any case my heels were never seen anywhere but the swimming pool or beach. Even the sandals I would grudgingly wear in mid-summer covered much of them up. I regard thongs to be generally as ugly as the feet that wear them. Really, in the range of human pulchritude, feet can generally be found at the bottom of the scale. Thongs are simply the cheapest (in both senses of the word) means to display the part of the body that often has the least going for it.

However. Then transition happened. Suddenly I am wearing sandals and slingbacks most of the time. My feet are practically naked, and are feeling pretty anxious. I look at them. I am repulsed by their ghastly soles. Grey, fissured; awful, awful, awful.

Around that time, I see an advertisement on television for what appears in essence to be a miniature angle grinder. It is being sold not by a hardware bloke in safety gear, but a woman in curlers. It is being sold not to help me build my next boat trailer, but to help me make my horny skin less horny.

Instantly, I am all in. Where do I sign? Yes, I know I use a rotary abrasion tool just like that in my workshop to grind metal… but I’m sure it is just perfect for podiatric beauty maintenance.