A Pair Of Shoes

I have had an email from the course tutor at Cambridge about the next module.

The term has commenced, and in a few days I will be heading south once again.

Today’s email, coming in the wake of the disconcertingly academic reading list, instructs me that before I start pedalling off down the motorway, I need to write, and pack in my satchel, an eight hundred word essay on the topic of A Pair Of Shoes.

A Pair Of Shoes.

For goodness’ sake.

It reminded me of school, of the days when unsympathetic teachers used to set rascals the task of writing impossibly pointless essays, concerning things like the inside of ping-pong balls, or once, I recall, an essay entitled The Difficulties Encountered Whilst Buying Fish And Chips.

That one was not mine to write, which I regretted, mildly, even when it was being handed out to the transgressor. I might have liked writing that one.

Certainly it sounds more promising than eight hundred words on the topic of shoes.

Not just any old shoes. A generic waffle on the subject of footwear will not, it would appear, fit the bill. It has got to be a pair of shoes.

Four hundred words each, perhaps.

I don’t have a pair of shoes I like enough for me to rhapsodise about them for eight hundred words. I am not even sufficiently middle-class to own a pair of wellies, which I have considered loathsome footwear since childhood. They rub your ankles and are icy cold in winter.

Somebody got in my taxi a little while ago and waxed lyrical about the glories of some actual middle-class wellies, the ones that cost about a hundred and thirty quid for a pair and which you really would not want to get muddy.

For a hundred and thirty quid I would probably polish them and display them on the bookcase.  I can’t remember what they were called now, so I wouldn’t be buying any even if I had a hundred and thirty quid, which I haven’t, certainly not after yesterday’s New Taxi Engine-Purchase Adventure.

In any case, one of my more gruesome footwear adventures involved the puncture of wellies, when Number One Daughter, aged about five, came rushing into the house squeaking with rage, and accusing Number Two Daughter of having borrowed, and then subsequently made a hole in, Number One Daughter’s favourite wellies.

Investigation led me to Number Two Daughter completely impaled upon a rusty nail sticking up from a plank. This had gone through the sole of her welly, her foot, and emerged out of the other side of her welly. I can’t remember what we did about it. I do remember that I had to purchase some new wellies for Number One Daughter, who was outraged at the damage, and that Number Two Daughter was thrilled at the nauseating effects the story, with subsequent demonstration, had upon the Infant Class Teacher. Apparently she could squish air through the hole in the bottom of her foot and it would come out of the top with a farting noise.

I never investigated this thoroughly enough to find if it was true. Some things are outside the remit of even the most responsible parent, which I wasn’t.

Anyway, I can’t write about wellies because I don’t wear them. When I go out walking I wear a pair of wonderful ancient walking boots, originally the property of Number One Daughter, purchased for some military activity involving running up and down mountains carrying rucksacks, logs, and another soldier on a stretcher, or something. She is in the PT Corps and is still the holder of the Fittest Woman In The Army Award, so she does things like that.

She decided the boots were too tight, and passed them down to Oliver, who subsequently wore them on some character-expanding Come Along, Boys, Up The Jolly Old Mountain We Go expeditions, organised by Gordonstoun, Then his feet got bigger, and he decided they were too tight as well.

After that I inherited them, and they are lovely. There is nothing as wonderful as shoes which somebody else has worn in for you, even the dear old Queen used to do it. I have even put sheepskin liners in them as a gesture towards my social aspirations. I bought these from Celtic And Co, so they are the genuine middle class article, none of your old Ugg-Boot-liner peasantry. I wear them every single day to walk up and down the fells with the dogs, and they keep my feet beautifully dry and warm, unless it is raining.

I can’t write about them. They are getting a bit old and might be starting to crack a bit, even though I wax them every week.

Perhaps I had better write about my flip-flops.