Behold, the Bally poster

Fantastic news, my Bally poster has been properly hung on the sitting-room wall!

And today I am wearing yellow shoes that match the colour of the shoes in the poster.

My One True Love presented me with this magnificent piece of art for Christmas. I know, I know – what did I do to deserve this?

My One True Love has a real gift (har! har!) when it comes to presents.

Because he’s such a good listener, he files away little snippets of information that come up in conversation, and then pulls them out at just the right moment.

This poster is the result of a conversation he and I had a few years ago after I returned from Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. I lived there for a while … though that’s a whole other story.

While I was there I was able to indulge my taste for lovely Bally shoes and handbags, because of course I was earning tax-free money and I had nothing to spend it on except myself. In Dubai at the time, the company you worked for would pay your rent (or a decent proportion of it) which left you free to save or spend as you desired.

Did I save, or spend?

Let’s just say my shoe collection increased exponentially.

There was a little Bally shop in the BurJuman shopping centre down the road from my Belshalat apartment building in Bur Dubai. An ordinary shopping centre? No way – it had a Mercedes dealership out the front of it.

But the Bally shop was staffed by whippet-thin Japanese girls, an Indian bloke, and two Indian women. And it was fantastic! I think it used to get all the shoes and bags and belts which weren’t sold in Europe the preceding season, and would flog them off relatively cheaply.

There was another Bally shop in the CityCentre, but it was a pain to get to through the Dubai traffic, which is notoriously awful.

During my time In Dubai I bought:

* Mustard-yellow high-heeled maryjanes with a narrow toe and ankle strap
* And the matching mustard-yellow handbag
* Mustard yellow kitten-heeled slip on mules
* Navy kitten-heeled slip on mules (same shoe, different colour)
* Olive green pumps with a mid-size heel
* And the matching olive green tote with handles and additional shoulder strap
* Sky-blue pumps with a mid-size heel. I remember writing to a girlfriend at the time: “who needs sky-blue shoes”? Answer: me, obviously!
* Black work shoes for My One True Love

I’ve been mildly obsessed with Bally ever since my time in Dubai, though these days it’s more through observation than participation. Because of course the pieces here are much more expensive (current season rather than European offcasts) and my dollars are sadly no longer tax-free. Oh and then of course there’s the mortgage ….

My One True Love surprised me in China though, in Xian where we stayed to see the Terracotta Warriors, by buying me a superb lilac quilted shoulderbag as an extravagant present. I didn’t even know China HAD Bally, and he managed to find the store.

He really is amazing.