Right now I'm trying hard to convince myself that it is not too outrageously decadent to own two pairs of everyday walking shoes without holes in them. Eek. When we were in Edinburgh, we spent a few hours wandering around the New Town shopping streets and poked into various shops, including a Scholls shoe shop, just to look for some heel inserts for one of Patrick's pairs of shoes. I wasn't looking for new shoes (after all, I already had a working pair without holes!) and anyway, you wouldn't go to a Scholls shop for high fashion, right? Oops. I found the most incredible pair of shoes - gorgeous, soft, and (which I found out because I slipped up and tried them on) soooooo unbelievably comfortable. But I put them back because they were £50, and I really didn't need another pair of shoes.

Then I made the mistake today of looking at the Scholls online shop - where I found out that they're now on massive, massive discount. Oops. They're on their way in the mail to me now.

Maybe I should poke some holes in my other pair to make it a worthwhile purchase?

***
This morning (also online!) I discovered a book whose existence made me so happy, I wanted to hug the author: A Charming Place: Bath in the Life and Novels of Jane Austen, by Maggie Lane. I've been feeling mildly desperate about the whole Issue of Bath lately, since I've lost my photos from our two-years-ago day-trip, and I don't foresee any other trips there in the next three or four months (and I really, REALLY don't want to wait that long to write the rest of Kat by Starlight, which is set mostly in Bath). At the local bookstores, I can find hundreds of books on the history of Leeds and Yorkshire...but none about Bath. I was really starting to tear my hair out by this morning when I finally found this book - and best of all, it's actually in the Leeds public library, albeit not at my local branch. I put in a request at high speed! (OK, I understand I probably wasn't competing with too many other crazed Jane Austen/Regency writers, but I was desperate.)

Meanwhile, I've read up everything I can find about Regency/Georgian Bath in my general history books, and I've been re-reading lots of novels set in Bath, like Northanger Abbey and Persuasion (as well as Jane Austen's own letters from & about Bath, at just the right time period). So really I just need to work up my confidence, get over myself and Just Start Writing...or else maybe I could rationalize watching the BBC version of Persuasion one more time first???? Hmmm....

Maybe I should have saved the shoe-order as a bribe to stop procrastinating!