The shoes are our friends.

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Gothic shoes, oil on card, 14 x 12.2 cm - unavailable

 The Shoes Are Our Friends

Shoes, of all the things we wear, are our dearest friends, protecting us and making our lives possible, accompanying us on every journey, uncomplaining, diligent, dependable.

Perhaps it is because this deep loyalty of service is expressed with so few complaints that we take our shoes for granted, casting them aside at the close of day almost contemptuously, stuffing sweaty socks inside them. And giving them the polishes they require only when they are utterly essential, their un-nourished faces having caught the contemptuous expression of  junior colleagues at the office. You rarely consider their well-being until the moment when, crossing a puddled pavement with wettened feet because the soles have holes, you sigh, I had better take these to the Paraguayan cobbler later this week. How tiresome!

I have long been aware of the wrongness of such indifference, and have been repaid not just with fidelity but loving concern. 

Recently,  I was in a small town in northern Uruguay, night falling, the air cool: a perfect time for a stroll. There were some people still around, closing shops, making their ways home. And out we went, my shoes and I, and I wandered somewhat aimlessly about a square, then down a cobbled street where a charming old church beckoned. The street lighting grew dimmer as I proceeded and, peculiarly, my shoes began pinching terribly. I had to return to the hotel immediately to relieve my feet.

"Have you been for a walk?", the plump receptionist enquired pleasantly.  I said where I had been. He replied, "you should be most careful round there, Señor, there have been many robberies". 

Indeed there was such a robbery later that night, only fifty metres from where I`d stopped. An old woman had been relieved of her handbag and pearls, and suffered a terrible heart-attack.

There is no doubt in my mind that it was a premonition on the part of my shoes that caused them to warn me.

Similarly, a few months ago, I decided to drive to the south of here, where coconut trees sway continually in a state of meditation. I dressed, then reached for my shoe, my foot expecting fully its cool embrace. But the shoe was resistant, as if it reduced itself by several sizes. I tried with the other shoe, but it was the same: I could scarcely squeeze my foot past the opening. I had to abandon my trip. Later I discovered that two tourists had been killed there by falling coconuts, their thick skulls  reduced to bloody fragments on the beach.

The scientifically-minded among you will, quite understandably, question my conclusions. They will mention, I`m sure, such factors, as coincidence, the possible swelling of my feet, or have some complicated ideas about auto-suggestion, or cleverly say, with enormous self-satisfaction, "ah but this is not enough to establish a pattern!" They might even suggest that I have been visited by delusions.

But I suspect that those among you who take such a stance are the very sort of people who, at the end of the day, casually fling their shoes into a corner of the room without so much as a "thank you", or a "goodnight".

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Read to The Vicious Circle writers' group 22 March, 2021

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