I have a love - hate relationship with shoes. Give the choice I will go barefoot or wear leather flip flops all of the time, but of course in the winter that is really not a practical option. I do have two pairs of shoes that I actually wear, and both of these are really coming to the end of their periods of usefulness, which means that I'll have to replace at least one pair. That means a. going to shoe shops and b. trying things on. The former I do not enjoy and the latter I find quite hard as it it difficult to reach my feet.
Nowadays people have shoes for every purpose. Trainers costing a small fortune have replaced pumps which didn't, and it seems that every activity has its own specially designed footwear.
As a child we may have had one pair of shoes for school/best, and a pair of slippers. Outdoors we wore wellington boots most of the year round, not the green ones, just plain black wellies. Buying shoes as fashion statements was not even a dream and even my sister had a very limited selection to choose from. There was no money for shoes and no storage space either and so we contented ourselves with what we had.
Then came the sixties and it seemed that all changed. For many of us that was when we began to care about how we looked. Haircuts, for example, became battle grounds with fathers. I was sent every two weeks for a short back and sides, until one day I decided that I was going to have a "Boston". That began the transition. Baggy denims changed to skin tight pale blue jeans and normal footwear became winkle pickers, long pointed toes that were derided by the parental generation. Having said that, I never really had the shoes that I wanted; mostly they were beyond my budget and so I have always settled for what I could afford.
At school, we were forced into membership of the Army Cadet Force, which I didn't much care for, and hd to wear a dreadful uniform that included gigantic and inflexible hobnailed boots. This had to be kept rigorously clean and were also a centre of conflict on a regular basis. I kept them for years afterwards and used them for pot holing.
It doesn't bother me anymore. few things do, but I do look forward to warmer days when I can manage without having to put on socks.
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