Sole searching…

I've got an confession to make - I like shoes. In fact while there are plenty of men I know who can survive well on two pairs – a brown pair and a black pair – I am not one of them.

I’m not really sure how or when this fascination for shoes happened, but in recent weeks I came to notice that I have quite a lot of shoes despite the fact that I still have only two feet.

That still did not stop me gravitating towards the shoe department on a recent visit to a store with my family, but at least on this occasion I did find myself able to resist the temptation of buying a new pair.

It was during this trip to the shoe department however that I began to firmly place the responsibility for my fascination with shoes on the shoulders of my family.

Coming in at number 11 in a family of 13 as I did, meant that as a child I didn’t always have new shoes, and sometimes relied instead on shoes passed down from older siblings.

But I have eight sisters and there were only so many pairs of pink sandals any self-respecting boy can stick!

Well, okay that’s a slight exaggeration (the eight sisters bit isn’t), but I did grow up in a time when shoes were passed down if they could be.

Despite the fact that my brother who is two years older did his best to virtually destroy every pair that he was given, curses of curses we had a cobbler in our town who could just about fix anything.

This man was more than a saviour of soles, he fixed heels and tongues as well. I soon began to pray that my feet would grow to size 11 so all my shoes would have to be new. Staying down at a size 2 wasn’t an option since some of my sisters had wee feet, what I needed was a pair of feet so big that I’d need to apply for planning permission before I could set them down anywhere.

It didn’t happen. Instead I managed a compromise of sorts, getting to and staying at a size seven which was bigger than any of my sisters’ shoe sizes, but still smaller than any of my brothers’.

At last I was assured of shoes I could call my own.

As I recall I thought myself pretty snazzy when I purchased the wine coloured kangaroo skin moccasins and the white slip-ons with the tassels, but in hindsight I was probably just making certain that I bought colours and styles that none of my brothers would even think of trying to squeeze in to!

Anyway over the years my fascination with shoes has continued, even if for a long while I wasn’t even aware of it until I had to throw them all in a box recently.

It was then I noticed that I had several pairs of shoes that I had never even worn more than once, and horror or horrors I almost had as many pairs as my better half.

That was a detail that was brought to my attention as well I might add, and there was even a claim that since I also have around a half dozen pairs of runners and football boots etc, that I have way more footwear than I really need.

To be honest there wasn’t much I could offer in the way of an answer to that when they were all stacked up in a pile in front of me and holding my hands up to admit that it was probably true I thought I’d try to be funny and said…”well if the shoe fits.”

What I wasn’t expecting though was the swift reply – “you go and buy it in every colour…”