Giving Up
In America I wore two items of footwear. Trekking boots in deepest winter, and maybe a couple of months either side, and in summer sandals.
Sometimes I wore sandals the whole year round, including during an ice storm which I now accept, as I should have then wearing icicle dreadlocks, was a mistake.
Forgoing clips on my pedals meant I could cycle wearing either sandals or boots. Some people couldn’t understand this so I reminded them when they were a kid they didn’t use toe-clips or any other fancy pedal technology yet strangely the wheels went around.
Shoes were something I wore on one or two days in the year, and I could never get used to the noise of them on everybody’s wooden floors so I tended to tip-toe slowly around when in shoes.
Now however I am back home, where it rains without notice and the sun shines like a memory. So I’ve been wearing shoes every day. Docs.
Docs last forever somebody said to me recently, and they do if you don’t ever wear them. Wear them all the time however and they just might go the way of my blue Dr Marten’s shoes - and burst at the sides.
But my shoes aren’t all that has given up on me since my return to Ireland. The Kettle lasted only days. Officially nobody is blaming me, and personally I think good value was got out of it considering the heavy usage in the short time, but now there is a new kettle boiling water for a permanent supply of tea.
This was going to be a long list - but I have to go out and joust with Dublin’s traffic - so I’ll leave it at just the two for now and we’ll talk again later.
Eolaí gan Fhéile:
i still have a pair of docs (brown brogues) that i wore to my first ever Dead Kennedys concert in 1982 in Denver, Colorado.
they seem to show no appreciable wear and tear.
‘course, i say that about myself every morning whilst shaving in my mirror…
I wore Docs everyday when I waited tables. They were comfortable but also very stinky with frequent wearing.
Oh they’re good alright - I’m just not so sure that anything is really designed for constant wear 24 hours a day.
And when ya know they’re stinking up you’re not exactly encouraged to take them off.