My fucking shoes (by Floris van Bommel) – the London diaries

This year I had my very first official Christmas-party in London. The company invited all staff and their partners for a nice party at Sealife London. As the partner, I decided to go for the less formal suit: a nice knitted tie in all colors of the ocean and matching shoes. Yes, indeed: blue shoes. Shiny blue shoes from one of the most fancy Dutch shoebrands (and my personal favorite): Floris van Bommel.

The crowd was international and most men were wearing a nice suit and black shoes. The only other Dutchie there wore a lightbrown pair. We like to stand out I guess. Or we are just weird. Nevertheless the colleagues of my partner noticed my shoes and gave me compliments. That’s the hard life of the partner-role and I adore it!

As the evening (or the drinks) revealed the true nature of my partner’s colleagues, conversations started to get funnier and funnier. Just like the wives that became aware of the ‘gay couple’. Before I knew it, I was dancing the way I used to do in highschool, lipsyncing duets where my tie was being used as a cord from fifty shades of grey and a leg of a woman curled around mine while she sang something that sounded like ‘let me sleep on it, baby baby, let me sleep on it’. Oh my, this would become a night to remember!

I could not resist

Then all of a sudden, one of my partner’s co-workers came up to me: ‘I like your fucking shoes’, he said.My English is ok, but as a non-native I had to improvise a response to his compliment. For a moment I panicked. What do you do when a co-worker (whom you never met before) of your partner uses the F-word? But as a copywriter I simply could not resist to turn it into a word game.
-‘These are not my fucking-shoes’ I replied. This could be the worst first impression I ever made. He looked at me with a surprised expression on his face.

It turned out he was looking for the right words to give me a proper reply.
‘Well, if I was gay, these shoes would be my fucking-shoes’. He started laughing and gave me a high-five. I think I can consider this first Christmas-party as a small success.

This is my 1st column in English. Let me know what you think or read other posts in English!