THE one item women like to buy more than any other, apparently, is a handbag.
Second on their list of retail desires are shoes, followed by summer dresses (presumably only in summer), concert tickets and jeans.
My wife Maria likes handbags but, if it came to a pinch, I think she would put shoes at the top of her list. Mind you, during our last trip to America, she picked a handbag big enough to carry a modest collection of shoes around with her.
“Look,” she said. “It's half price. It’s such a bargain. Look how much we’ll save.”
Do you follow the female logic here, chaps? The bag was $80, reduced from $160. We were saving $80. As long as I paid $80. You work it out. I gave up and bought the bag.
And she has so many shoes they have become a hazard. I keep my wedding and funeral suit in the bedroom wardrobe and, if I open it without due care and attention, I am in danger of being swept away in a tsunami of handbags and shoes.
One of these days, she’ll come home and find me prone beneath a pile of leatherwork and size five footwear, knocked unconscious by a mule and pinned to the carpet by a stiletto through my lughole.
I wouldn't mind but, since the kids left home, we converted a spare room into a walk-in wardrobe and still there’s not enough room. She could shoe Ossett and handbag for England.
But then, I suspect, so could every lady in the land.
