Shoes

I'm probably going to get in trouble with my wife for this. Actually, before I get in trouble with my wife I'm going to start with a little vignette from Yorkshire. Because I seem to spend a lot of time knocking Yorkshire and this is a rare opportunity to celebrate our famous directness.

I was buying a pair of shoes in Huddersfield (you see the sophisticated jet-setting life that I lead?) and while I was trying some shoes on, another customer had taken his to the checkout. Of course you can't go to a shoe shop, pick some shoes and leave – that would be far too simple. When you get to the counter, they have to go into this big routine about how if you don't use their special shoe cream and NEVER EVER use ordinary polish, your shoes may crumbly to dust in days. If you're a bloke and you've just bought a pair of dress shoes they try to sell you shoe trees with nightmarish stories of how shoes that aren't kept in shoe trees will curl up like river trout that have been victims of a toxic spill. So most normal people have a box, or a cupboard, or a small room full of over-priced “Shoe balm” and the bottom of many a blokes wardrobe is a nasty tangle of unused shoe trees. What the don't tell you about shoe trees is that without special training it's impossible to get them in and out without losing a finger. Plus they make your shoes get bigger, so by the time you take them out to use your dress shoes for that wedding or that award ceremony you're flapping around like Bim Bom the clown.

Well anyway, I was trying on a pair of shoes and this other bloke was buying a pair. And the shop assistant went into her little spiel about how his shoes were going to crumble to dust if he didn't buy the special badger cub placenta-based shoe cream that she was hawking, but before she could even get started he said.

“Don't start wi' that, there's nowt more annoying! Here's thi' money now give me mi shoes.” Awesome. Just awesome. The famous Yorkshire directness put to proper use.

Talking of shoe trees and stretching shoes actually reminds me of a bit of shoe shadenfreude. A mate of mine went and got some shoes hand made by Churches and he was so full of praise for these really comfortable shoes. Oh the joys of deploying yourself around town in hand-made shoes that fit like a glove for the mere price of five or six of your piffling plebian shoes. And then his feet got bigger! Oh you shouldn't should you but ha ha! Ha, ha!

Shoes aren't really a big thing for me. I'm looking down at the ones that I'm wearing now. An extremely scuffed and dusty pair of DM's. I tend to wear one pair until they're actually dropping off my feet and then I have to go through that awkward phase with another pair where they aren't comfortable and they're rubbing my heels and I feel about three hundred years old. I have one handy tip here though. If you polish them before you put them on for the first time (with real, old-fashioned shoe polish, sorry that Qtip Regenerate Leather Serum Balm Sputum that you bought at the shoe shop is fucking rubbish).

But I am vaguely aware that women think of shoes a bit differently. Apparently, one of the reasons (or one of the reasons that I can understand) that women get very excited about shoes is that you don't have to have the right size body to fit into them. You don't have to slim to fit into them. Also, high heels are sexy (and some of course say, hideously sexist) because they unbalance you and in order to regain your balance you just happen to have to stick out your bum and your chest. The bit that I have difficulty with when it comes to women and shoes is that in the mind of many women, they don't seem to be things that you should walk around in. I've often observed this with friends and relatives of my wife, who's from Greece. Which has lead me to wonder about the existence of Agios Manolos Blahnickos – the Greek patron saint of inappropriate footwear. For example. It's not uncommon for female friends and relatives of my wife to come and visit us in London in shoes that can't be worn in the wet! Where did you think you were coming? Or to come with us on a walking holiday in the lake district with a selection of six pairs of high heels. Actually that's just as likely that it'll be a male friend who has nothing but a selection of two-tone winkle pickers, and maybe even spats. So it's quite a common reaction when I propose any kind of activity to my Greek friends and family “But Mark – we only have ice skates.” But just as I'm warming to my topic and getting all self-righteous about how stupid these Greek people are, I'm remembering that, when left to my own devices to pack for a fortnight's holiday in Paros at the height of Greek summer, I arrived with two pairs of boxer shorts and three pullovers – one of them a heavy pullover. A ridiculous multicoloured thick-knit thing that gets me abused in the streets.

So, just as when I'm packing for a searingly hot fortnight in Greece, all my experience of holidays in England is whispering in my ear “It might snow, it might rain, you might run out of calor gas in the caravan and have to set fire to the relatives you don't like to keep warm.” So maybe something similar is happening when the Greeks pack - “The lake district can't really be constant rain for nine months of the year. There might be a sophisticated cocktail bar at the top of Cat Bells”

Oh, and talking of inappropriate footwear. I went to see “Shoes! The Musical” which was actually a lot more interesting than I thought it would be (free tickets). And I did learn that Uggs are isothermal, which I think means they maintain your feet at the same temperature. And that appeals to my nerdy little man's mind. Ooh yes. Isothermal. I like the idea of getting some shoes that are guaranteed to keep my feet at just the right temperature (that's not actually what they're saying, I mean they could actually keep your feet constantly too hot and sweaty). But there's a bit of a problem with them isn't there? They're not waterproof. So the the kind of time of year when you're going to need to keep your feet isothermally warm – the winter – you're going to have a bit of trouble wearing them. Ok, this is the time to pull out another nerdy fact about wool, that it works to keep you warm, even when its wet. But there's a bit of a price to pay in that it involves heaving around 8 kilos of grey slush on each foot.

Just finally – the Greeks have really cute words for shoes. The Greek word for shoes is “Papootsia”. But that isn't anywhere near as cute as their word for slippers “Pandoofles”. I seem to spend about half of my life walking around my house trying to figure out where I left my slippers. Some how it seems less futile, and slightly more exotic, if I think of them as “Pandoofles.”

Posted via email from The Ginger Mumbly