Free The Shoe Princess's Guide to the Galaxy by Emma Bowd Page A

very own organic gourmet cat-food label, Mange Chat. Naturally, her feline clientele will be at the top end of the market. Orders are already streaming in from Europe, the US, Japan and Australia. She sincerely hopes that she can be a role model to all working mothers, as someone who balances brains, beauty and the nurturing of her baby, for the betterment of herself and the world around her.
    I think I am going to puke, and I leg it straight to the computer to see what the Trash Queenz have to say about this.
            Damn. They confirm it’s a done deal. In fact, it’s apparently one of the highest single celebrity endorsements ever signed, due largely to The Cat’s unique household-brand power. It seems the supermodel-supermum has just added superbusinesswoman to her name.
            I read on ... Aha:
Whispers abound, from credible sources within Mange Chat, that The Cat had absolutely nothing to do with product development and has simply signed her name for a truckload of money.
    Now, that’s more like it.
            I calmly make my way back to the sofa and take up from where I was rudely interrupted: ‘1960s Soap Star Marries Toy-boy Lover in Lavish Star-studded Balinese Ceremony – Exclusive Photos.’ Aahhh, bliss .
     
    www.ShoePrincess.com
 
SP Survey Results
 
Q:        Why do heterosexual men think that women’s shoes should cost £10, and that any more than one pair in a wardrobe is a heinous crime?
 
It was extremely tough picking a winner, given that most of you came up with the same answer: something along the lines of the hunter-gatherer conundrum, with men just not ‘getting’ shoes.
 
So, I’ve decided to give the L.K. Bennett gift voucher to SP of Edinburgh who offered a very clever solution to this age-old problem (shoe-shop owners take note!):
 
A:        ‘If I owned a shoe shop, I’d call it Fruit ’n’ Veg, so that when it came up on VISA statements, my loyal customers’ penny-pinching partners would not realise it was shoes.’
 
A deserving winner, I’m sure you’ll agree!
 
Shoe SOS
 
I feel it is my civic duty to pass on to the powers that be at L.K. Bennett:
 
The ex-pat Aussie SPs need you. Desperately!

10. Sole Mate
    22, 20, 18, 16 ... 14. No. It can’t be. I double-check the address Mary (the health visitor) gave me, which I’ve scribbled on a scrap of paper, before noticing the sign in the window advertising today’s cooking demonstration and talk on weaning. This looks like it.
            It strikes me that I must have walked past this building a million times in my pre-Millie morning sprints to the tube. Purposefully clip-clopping along, cappuccino in hand. Funny, I always thought it was a squat. I’m still not convinced, and spend the next few minutes loitering around outside, pretending to fix Millie’s hat and blankets.
            I spy a likely suspect: a mum with a pushchair slows a little and then stops right next to me, giving me a kindly no-teeth smile. She then puts the brakes on, yanks on her nappy-bag backpack, takes her baby out of the pushchair, folds the pushchair with one arm and one foot, and then gamely carries the whole lot down the steep little moss-covered steps to the basement of the Victorian terraced house.
            Blimey! I watch in horror. Could they not make it any more difficult? A moat to swim over, perhaps. Nevertheless, I follow her down, secretly cursing my stupid pushchair and its stupid metal framework for scraping enormous pieces of leather from the tips of my pointy pink mules.
            Mary immediately spots me. She latches on to my elbow with an enthusiastic and welcoming tug, and guides me into the heart of the room. I feel eerily like the new girl at school, being dragged into the bowels of hell by a mad woman in size 11 white trainers and Teletubbies socks. Whatever am I getting myself into?
            I can hardly believe the sight before my eyes: there must be about a