Dianne Sharma-Winter

I love to look at the foot of a baby and think about where these feet will take the newborn. There is something precious and hopeful about the barefooted beauty of a baby who is months away from taking it's first steps onto the Road of Life.

Having been a barefooted traveller along the road for many years now, I love and appreciate my feet. They have often been my sole mode of transport, taken me places where I didn't think I could go and only ever complained when I tried to force them into shoes.

Roaming around in warm climes is one way to treat reveal your barefooted beauty to the world. Let those toes peep and shine and liberate your best friends on the road from their prison but please darlings do it in style.

Once my daughter was late for some event or another and was scrummaging through the house for a pair of shoes to wear, keeping another woman waiting.

"For God's sakes darling," said the woman and mad poet. "Just paint your toenails and wear your barefeet!"

I like that kind of attitude as much as I like having my feet connected to Papatuanuku (Mother Earth). If you are going to do anything in life then do it with style, I say.

A weekly pedicure is both necessary for looking fabulously barefooted and there is absolutely no excuse for having cracked heels. Cracked heels are the bane of many a barefooted warrior queen and sandal wearer. In India there is an entire section of the cosmetics industry devoted to cracked heels.

You can buy this nifty little tube of cream, you can scrape your heels until they bleed with varying versions of a steel horse rasp that collects dead skin cells and rusts in the bathroom; you can wobble and limp on your cracked and bleeding heels through the change of seasons and winter or you can just get down and dirty with one of these nifty little things.

Called a Kalu, it has been used for centuries in India, costs less than a bar of soap and lives until you drop it or the rough underside wears thin. Its soft on the skin and works better than anything I have tried!