Down memory lane: Fifi, Charles Jourdan and Edward de Bonno

"Fifi" is the name I gave to my newly adopted neighbourhood cat (see photos). As I was calling her the other day I remembered the other "Fifi", an Arab bottler's wife and the immortal story of the shoes.
One day an Arab bottler and his wife, Fifi, visited me in Athens and since I was a native, he asked me to accompany his wife shopping, as she wanted to buy Charles Jourdan shoes a luxury brand at the time. I asked Popi to help me out at this assignment, and went and picked Fifi up from the hotel and took her to the Charles Jourdan shop in Syntagma Square, not there anymore, I think.
All three go in, and she asks to try a particular shoe model and tells the sales guy that she wears a European size 36-37 (US woman's size 6-6.5). We were floored! No way she would wear such a small shoe size, because I forgot to mention that dear old Fifi dwarfed battleship Potemkin in sheer mass.
Fifi was a definite 40-41 shoe size (US woman's size 9.5-10), but no matter how hard Popi and the sales guy tried to persuade Fifi to try bigger size shoes, she wouldn't budge. Time was passing without any success in sight and I was in Cambronne creek then a flash of genius. I take the sales guy on the side and ask him to tell Fifi that the shoe sizes in Greece are different than the rest of Europe and the Arab world and that if she wanted a European size 36-37 then the corresponding Greek size would be 40-41. As a modern day Alexander the Great I had cut this Gordian Knot and everybody was happy. I was wearing my Edward de Bonno green thinking hat that day :-)