An Irish wedding and a rain shower forced me to confront the terrible transience of footwear…
Driving through the west of Ireland can feel like a journey made in a motoring simulator. This is especially true if you’re used to negotiating the roads of London and the south of England, many of which are rarely empty, even in the wee hours.
At times, County Clare is eerily free of traffic. You have the well-kept tarmac to yourself as you wend your way around windswept hills paved with fissured limestone.
It all seems too good to be true – driving is supposed to be a cheerless slog, punctuated by major slights and minor victories.
In the summer of 2018, I found myself once again on these uncanny highways. I was driving my wife, mother-in-law and one-year-old daughter north from the ancestral home in Clare to Westport in County Mayo. The reason for our trip: the wedding of one of my wife’s many Irish cousins.
A catastrophic breach
As we neared the end of our 120-mile journey, we stopped for lunch in Castlebar, Mayo’s largest town. While my wife and my mother-in-law queued for a table in a cafe, my daughter and I braved the persistent drizzle so that she could make use of the puddles that had begun to form along the road.
She encouraged me to join her. After a few enthusiastic splashes, I sensed water seeping rapidly into my right sock. I hoisted my trainer up to inspect the underside, and discovered a rubbery pearl of insole protruding through the worn black plastic.
I felt like five pairs of shoes was already more than enough
The sight caused indignation to flare somewhere in the back of my mind.
This development meant that, some time in the future, I would have to buy another pair of shoes.
I felt I already owned more than enough shoes, and that those already in my possession should not require replacement.
In fact, my collection of shoes represented the totality of all the footwear for which my mind had conceptual space.
The specific breakdown was as follows:
- one casual pair
- one smart-casual pair
- one work pair
- one work pair for black-tie events
- one pair for weddings.
Now, to my way of thinking, even this quick mental audit uncovers a few troubling signs of excess.
A good deal of creative accounting seems to have been employed to justify the inclusion of overlapping categories. Allowing both ‘smart-casual’ and ‘work’ into the mix is like insisting that a fruit salad requires tangerines and clementines, for the sake of complexity.
Worse still, owning separate pairs of shoes for weddings and black-tie events feels like an extravagance from the last days of the Ancien Régime. Why not also purchase separate pairs of slippers for upstairs and downstairs use, your excellency?
Quest for the Forever Shoes
Putting aside my already profligate approach to footwear, what is really critical to note is that, within a stock-taking exercise like this one, there is never any conception of future shoes.
Every time some unforeseen circumstance forces me to buy another pair of shoes, my mind registers both surprise and a sense of injustice.
I’m alway convinced the next pair of shoes will last forever
In the same way that people talk, with blissful satisfaction, about owning their ‘forever house’, I am perpetually convinced that I’ve purchased my Forever Shoes.
Like those happy homeowners, there is no need for me to conceive of the future because I’m already living in it. In fact, I’m walking around in it, in my everlasting footwear.
But my waterlogged trainer was the second such item to betray me that month.
Two weeks earlier, my right hiking boot had suffered a catastrophic failure. At the conclusion of a strenuous eight-mile hike, the entire outsole finally died of exhaustion, peeling cleanly away from the upper, like the skin of a perfectly ripe banana.
This, after a mere fifteen years of moderate use. Why isn’t footwear designed to last?
The prophet at the door
We secured a table in the cafe just as the rain really settled in. I gazed at the walls, studded with photographs of classically minimalist Irish shop fronts, and tried to ignore the ongoing sensation of half standing in a puddle.
We seated our daughter in a high chair next to the cafe entrance and she soon warmed to her front-of-house role, addressing the departing patrons with a cheery “buh-bye!” and a toothy grin.
Despite the fact that her parents had brought no such protection, she soon became preoccupied with whether the other customers had the foresight to bring umbrellas, to shield them from the downpour.
Over time, her expressions of concern escalated from motherly to evangelical. By the time we’d finished our meals she was as insistent as a preacher warning the sinners of their last opportunity to repent: “Brella! Rainy, rainy! BRELLA!”
If she only knew that her Daddy wouldn’t be fully dry until we’d negotiated the final 10 miles of our journey to Westport.
The following afternoon, I stepped into my wedding shoes – literally, the shoes that I’d had to purchase for my own wedding, and that I therefore felt somewhat justified in owning – and made my way to the evening reception.
I had my hands full: one was thrust deep into my pocket, massaging a folded cheat sheet of hotel stationery bearing the hastily scribbled names of myriad Irish relatives.
The other hand held onto my daughter, who toddled excitedly at my side in a cardigan and lace princess frock, ready to dance in her fresh white Mary Janes.
