OK, so let’s move along from toes and briefly pause at the instep. I’m glad I have paused here because just a few clicks of the mouse have helped me realise that all my life I have been confusing the arch of the foot with the instep; I thought they were the same thing. I always wondered why we were told to kick a football with the instep… maybe I could have been a professional had I but known. Oh well.
There should be a name for these situations where you find out you have been wrong about something for your whole life. For instance, it wasn’t until the Harry Potter books came out, and I heard Stephen Fry reading them, that I realised I had been saying ‘Hermione’ wrong all my life. Another was finding out that Charing Cross had its own tube station – I always thought you had to walk down to Embankment.
Back to feet, and at the back of the foot is, of course, the heel. The most famous heel belonged to Achilles (of Greek legend) whose mother held him by the heel when she dipped him into the Styx to try and make him invincible. Thus, he was 99% invulnerable but… well you know how it panned out. The Achilles tendon is the only part of the body that is named after a person (real or fictional) apart from the Adam’s apple (which I doubt is the word used by medical professionals)… or so I thought. But no. There are loads of them from the ducts of Bellini to a sphincter of Oddi. I have been living in ignorance on so many levels.
In a perfect world, there would be something named after a scientist called Hermione which would let me draw this piece together with a metaphorically beautifully knotted bow.
But there isn’t.
SteveTLooksBack 