“You have the feet of an angel”

I turned around to find a thirty-something man in a suit grinning at me.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, your feet, they’re angelic - so beautiful”

I looked down at my feet. Granted, the turquoise nail polish I had on was cute, and the sparkly flip-flops quite sweet, but my size eight-and-a-half flat feet, angelic? I think not.

I looked back up to find him smiling contentedly at me.

“You see, lovely; they really are gorgeous”

“I think you’re mistaken” I replied, adding “but thank you anyway for the compliment”

He shook his head. “No, no, no, it is you who is mistaken, you have perfect feet – I saw them from over there”, he gestured towards the tube station I had just exited, “and I just had to tell you how lovely they were”. He grinned widely at me.

I looked back at him, trying to mask my suspicion with an ironic arch of a single eyebrow, but quite probably looking like I was grimacing instead.

“Don’t think I am weird” he said, cottoning on to the exact thought running through my mind, “it’s just that, well you are a very foxy lady, so I wanted to talk to you anyway, but when I saw your feet, I just had to say something, because they are the most gorgeous ones I have ever seen”

I laughed. “Well, thanks; I’m not quite sure I agree, but cheers”. I shifted my feet uncomfortably, aware that his gaze kept dropping to toe-level, and for the first time in my life, finding it somehow more disconcerting that he was looking at my feet, rather than my breasts.

“I know this may sound a bit forward, but, um, could I massage them for you sometime?” he asked, his eyes lighting up a little.

Oh great. A foot fetishist; just my luck. If it’s not a breast fixated man, or an emotionally immature guy, it’s a bloke who wants to worship my feet. Fabulous. I must have a sign on my forehead that says ‘only approach this girl if you are odd, an arsehole, or just plain weird; normal guys need not apply’

“No thanks”, I replied, “though it’s very kind of you to offer”

“Is it because you have a boyfriend?” he asked, pursuing the matter.

“Yes” I lied, thinking that he would take the hint, “he wouldn’t really approve”

“Oh but there don’t need to be any strings attached, I just want to stroke them” he reasoned, thinking that this would convince me more, rather than give me even more of an incentive to run as far away as possible.

“Thank you, really, I’m just not interested” I said, adding, “but five gold stars for your approach; the most original I’ve ever encountered”

He grinned. “Well, your boyfriend is a lucky man: you really are quite beautiful you know, and I hope he spends all night caressing your lovely feet”

“He does” I lied, thinking that if that was on my list of requirements for a partner, I would be destined to be single for the rest of my life. “He’s a lovely man; I’m on my way to see him now”

He shook my hand, and wished me well, and I walked off in my flip-flops, trying to appear both elegant and on-the-way-to-see-a-boyfriend-like, which resulted in my tripping up on myself and almost stumbling over.

It didn’t seem to matter: he was still staring contentedly in the direction of my feet – a look of awe and delight on his face.

I suppose in terms of approaches, he was really quite harmless – and certainly better than the guy who recently grabbed my arse when I was walking along Shaftsbury Avenue at 1am and who thought he would win me over by then saying “hey babe” to me. (I shouted at him as he ran away from me, that he was a “fuckingcunt” and a “motherfuckingprick” and he disappeared, embarrassed, into Soho).

Don’t get me wrong, The Girl does like getting chatted up, but when it seems like it’s just the inept tossers or weirdos who approach me, it doesn’t give me much hope in meeting a normal bloke through these means.

Which is why I tend to do all the chatting up myself; at least this way I get to establish their normalness (or not) through my Personality Detector Test, or in other words, cut through the bullshit and find out if they

a) have a brain and are interesting/good company

b) are upfront and honest

c) feel intimidated by assertive women

Obviously this is a basic minimum, but I apply it to all men I meet, (regardless of sexual interest) and it does often prove to be a good judge of their character.

Admittedly, there is also a,

d) are someone that makes me throb between my legs, in which case how much wine do we need to drink before I get the chance to snog them

but lets not discuss that for the moment.