I realised fairly quickly upon my arrival in Sweden two things: the first was that it was really cold (being, as it was, January, at the time), and the second was that there appeared to be very few fat people.

Ordinarily you might think that those two particular points have no bearing on each other (although I have a theory now that they're skinny because it's so cold and need to have faster metabolisms in order to wear mini-skirts in winter), but actually it meant firstly that when I got here I needed some tall boots to keep my feet/legs warm, and secondly I couldn't get any tall boots to keep my feet/legs warm because by Swedish standards I apparently have abnormally fat calves.

I'd already suspected that my calves were fat when I was on a boot search in Sydney last year that yielded no result except a bruised ego, and I've always had this sort of inkling that from behind my legs look like two rather plump Christmas hams. You know, round and pink at the topend, and kind of chunky and knobbly at the trotter... But when you get to a country and realise that you can't buy pants there because, genetically, you were grown with an ass and legs that aren't the same diameter from top to bottom, and you can't buy shoes there because your calves are abnormally fat, you get sad. Very sad. And then you also get cold toes.

Then I saw these boots in Åhlens on the weekend, and my foot fit quite nicely, which in itself is unusal, and when my foot fit, I decided I liked them, and it basically went downhill from there. They are leather afterall, and if a cow couldn't stretch a bit when chewing the cud, then leather would be no good to it. Basically, at the time of trying on, I couldn't zip them up the whole way. Mainly I just didn't want the humiliation of the shoe store lady looking at my calf being squeezed like a salami and take the shoes away from me.

Anyway, long story short, now I own a pair of beautiful boots, which I can do up..it took some trying but I got it anyway.. and I have enough time to wear them in properly before winter. They're a bit muffiny, but the small bit of lacing at the top means that I can stretch them gradually and then tie them up at the top as tight as I want without leg-muffinage. It was time for some new shoes anyway because my penguin shoes have finally died from overuse, just as my spotty ones and pointy ones did before that.

I also had to hide behind a column full of shoes with Lauren and Brent shielding me because I saw the creepy man who stalked me in the bank, and then the shoe lady looked a bit confused because we were acting strangely, but he was stalking another woman, and I got my shoes in the end, so I guess it all ended well.