Now might be a good time to think of feet. Feet are at home on the ground; they are naturally grounded. No point in bringing a foot down to earth; that is where it is anyway. There is nothing elevated or arrogant about feet. Humble foot-soldiers are those who do the donkey-work, unglamorous but essential.

Some people have an aversion to feet, thinking them ugly or smelly. The sight of a naked sole is considered offensive in Islam. I feel rather the opposite: if not a foot fetishist, then I am an admirer of feet - not just of all the work they do, silently and without complaining, carrying us hither and thither, but also of their unsung sensitivity. Feet are full of nerve endings as well as small bones and muscles. They need to be that way, as in our earlier days we had to feel our way with them, almost as much as see our way with eyes. The soles of feet, though they have the thickest skin on the body, are in fact exquisitely sensitive, a fact known to children and torturers.

A few years ago, I went on one of those self-improving holidays on a Greek island where you don't just lie in the sun and drink retsina but learn to write children's stories and paint in watercolour. In my case, having done enough creative writing courses and therapy to make up for several generations of my family starved of such things, the courses I chose on Skyros were foot reflexology and Commedia dell'Arte acting.

This might seem a peculiar combination but both were inspired choices. In particular, the reflexology course, which took place on a series of mornings in an outdoor clearing, surrounded by pine trees, high above the bay of Atsitsa, was something I would not have missed for anything.

As some of you may know, foot reflexology uses the foot as a map of the body, positing correspondences between zones of the foot and organs and parts of the body. The soft area between the ball of the foot and the heel, I remember, was said to correspond with the stomach, and the big toe with the head.

Those of a relentlessly scientific bent will already be reaching for their revolvers, or drafting complaints to the Financial Times for giving space to New Age twaddle. I myself was never entirely convinced by the theory of correspondences, at least at a purely physiological level; in practice, though, it seemed to work. As thumbs and forefingers worked their way slowly round the soft underbelly of the foot, stomachs rumbled. I won't say cancers were cured and heart attacks averted by any of this, but people seemed to feel better for it.

I remember finding there to be something both touching and heartening about the sight of a group of rather complicated middle-class people (think Bridget Jones and her boyfriends and you will not be far off the mark) attending to one another's feet. Those who refuse to accept that we are descended from apes would have had to avert their eyes. The fact was, we resembled nothing more than a family or group of baboons engaged in mutual grooming. But then, as David Attenborough once whispered while his hair was being being gently sifted by an enormous female gorilla, it is not they who are the most dangerous and destructive species of primate.

One of the most affecting scenes in St John's Gospel occurs the week before Jesus's death, when he visits his friends the sisters Martha and Mary in Bethany; after supper Mary anoints Jesus's feet with a costly ointment, and wipes his feet with her hair. Judas Iscariot remonstrates with her, saying the ointment should be sold and the proceeds given to the poor. This elicits one of Jesus's most gnomic remarks, "The poor always ye have with ye, but me ye have not always." Later Jesus washes his disciples' feet, in a practical demonstration of humility. It seems both significant and cruelly ironic that Jesus pays so much attention to feet just before his crucifixion.

Feet have strength, sensitivity and humility (forgive me if this is beginning to sound like an advertisement for a bathroom product); we ignore and undervalue them at our peril. Only three poets that I know of have written odes to feet: Robert Herrick's and Pablo Neruda's are not to their own but to, respectively, a mistress's and a wife's; Neruda undoes much of his good work by saying at the end of "Tus Pies" that he loves Matilde's feet only because they have brought her to him.

Christopher Twigg's "To My Feet" is fairly and squarely about his own feet, which makes it to my mind the best of these poems. "When I lost my faith/ my feet never doubted;/ they kept up a groundswell/ of firm belief." Let us all learn something of the wisdom of feet: "Oh let me not ignore their happiness/ their life of present moments, felt and lived!"

By Harry Eyres

 Source: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a9067e4e-972b-11dd-8cc4-000077b07658.html

Published: October 11 2008 03:00 | Last updated: October 11 2008 03:00

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