I often stop to help people with their prams and cases and so on when I’m in tube stations – usually because nobody else will and I just feel far too sorry for them. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no ‘good samaritan’, but I won’t just waltz past somebody who obviously needs help. Sometimes, however, I get about halfway through my ‘helping’ and I seriously start to regret it. I know that sounds uncharitable, but it’s true – I’ll be there with a huge pram banging into my shins, knowing that the next day they’ll be covered in bruises, and in my head I’m screaming why are you on the bloody tube with such a great big bloody pram, you silly tit! Or I’ll be struggling with one end of a huge case that probably has ten dead bodies in it, thinking get a CAB you pillock!

I especially can’t stand it when I’m helping someone and about three hundred strapping blokes push past – strapping blokes are always the least likely people to help anyone and it really gets on my nerves. Anyway – rant over, because I have to tell you about my helping episode yesterday, which is definitely an episode that I wished I had not begun.

There was a man in a wheelchair at the bottom of a huge flight of stairs and he was sat in his chair facing the stairs and looking up. Can wheelchairs climb stairs? I stupidly thought. Will he need help? I was wearing quite a flimsy, floppy little summer dress and not very large pants underneath (you can guess where this is going, surely?) and it was a little breezy.

“Do you need any help?” I said to the man, at which point he nodded and sprung – yes sprung – from his chair. I hadn’t noticed that the man was a dwarf until this point, but it was very apparent once he stood up as he reached crotch level and no higher. (I have looked into the dwarf business and am told that it is the right word to use, before I get a zillion complaints!) Anyway, the fact that this man was a dwarf is almost irrelevant – I’m just setting the scene. Had he been the one walking up the stairs behind me, it may have been even more of a disaster!

We carried the wheelchair up the stairs together and I could vaguely hear him talking to me, but I could never hear whether he was saying “you can go faster” or “you’re going to fast”, so I was busy concentrating on trying to listen when my dress began to fly up. It was the kind of dress that really goes for it once it starts to have a little fun, and soon enough the hem was dancing around my ears – I couldn’t suddenly let go of the wheelchair for fear that I might catapult the man down the stairs, and I couldn’t tell him to put the chair down because he was too busy trying to tell me to slow down/speed up/whatever it was he was trying to say…

UGH. This is why you should always help people, but not if you’re wearing a skirt or a dress. The people behind me on the stairs got a total eyeful! Also do not attempt to aid another if you are wearing heels (you’ll break your neck) or if you are drunk.

Thank God (tenuous link alert!) my arse looked nice and toned. For not only have I been at the Educogym, I have been wearing my Fitflops! Now in absolute truth, I have no idea whether or not these do actually tone your bum, but I can say that they are extraordinarily comfortable and much better for your feet and your posture than regular flip-flops. They don’t really flip about, for a start. They have huge, orthopaedic-looking soles and they have some kind of technology in them that makes you engage your core muscles. I find that I walk much faster in mine – as though I’m being invisibly pushed down a hill, and I also find that my feet get less tired.

I have the ones with the bronze sequins (above) but there are loads of different styles – my Mum has some silver trainers (you can read all about hers on My Mum Says) and I also have some Ugg-boot style ones that are cosy and gorgeous. I’ll agree that they’re not the most attractive of shoes, but I’d also say that the people at Fitflop are doing pretty well to make them look this good – the originals are pretty ‘functional’!

So there – an anecdote, a review and a plug for my mum’s blog all in one go!

Fitflops are available in loads of places as well as their own site, including: Sweaty Betty, John Lewis and even Boots!