The last pair of shoes I bought was in France last week, during one of the torrential downpours described in mind-numbing detail on this very journal. While I ordered Jenny to wade up the street to fetch the umbrellas, I browsed the Gallic shoe selection.

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Up until recently, Clarks have made a range of pretty convincing copies of Camper shoes. From the age of about 14 to around 25, I'd have been unlikely to hover within 20 yards of a Clarks shoe shop, and you'd be more likely to see me browsing in a branch of Mothercare or Ann Summers than perusing any of Clarks clumpy footwear. While I was at school in Dunstable their shoes were synonymous with acne, briefcases and getting ones homework in on time – all of which were also synonymous with me, but I didn't want to force the point home and seal my reputation as a repulsive swot by wearing unfashionable shoes, on top of everything else. I knew that it was far cooler to fail to hand your homework in while teetering around on spindly creations which barely conformed to school rules (if you were a girl) or wearing some outlandish multi-coloured shoe made popular by Paul Weller, Bruce Foxton and Rick Buckler, which were available from the “little mod's shop” called Family Affair on High St North.

Anyway, I've been buying Clark's Camper copies for the last 3 years, spending less than £35 a pop, while the real things cost upward of £80. Bargain. But inexplicably, Clarks have discontinued the range, and about 2 months ago I found myself going the Camper shop in Covent Garden, having “styled” the rest of my “look” around this kind of shoe, and needing above all else to “maintain” said “look”. “It's bloody annoying,” I said, handing over my credit card to the shop manager, “because Clarks used to do this exact shoe for less than half the price.” He smiled. “I know,” he said, swiping the card with the look of a man who knows that business is booming, and promotion is imminent. I have a theory that Camper's legal team got onto Clarks, started making a fuss, and Clarks legal team were unable to match their fearsome power having only previously dealt with small claims cases about inefficient shoehorns. You only have to look at the way Behringer rip off the designs of every other audio manufacturer known to man and sell them at miniscule prices to know that it can be done successfully – providing you arm yourselves with expensive lawyers.

In Marseille, however, the long arm of Camper law hasn't yet reached into town, and I found a pair at 40 Euros that fitted the bill perfectly, and the purchase of which might help to prolong the life of my pricier shoes. They had an annoying red flash on the heel, but hey, beggars can't be choosers. I bought them. Today, I'm wearing them. At lunchtime, I noticed that one of the flashes was hanging off my a small thread of plastic. “Ah, good news,” I thought, pulling it off, then pulling the other one off, to match. Of course, underneath the flash is a HOLE. Then it started to rain. Then my shoes started to squelch. I was awfully cross. I sent an email to Jenny, moaning. She replied swiftly. “You tore off part of the sole, you can't be surprised to find a hole underneath. Keep the red thing, stick it back on, and colour it in. Weekend project. Seriously.”

So there you go, if anyone wondered what I was going to be up to this weekend, I'll be colouring in my shoes.