Solipsism and shoes.
Nov. 16th, 2010 11:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnny9fingersI've been thinking (always a bad sign) about my sartorial changes. In the two-or-so years since I hung up the battered old biker leather jacket for good (though it had been more than twenty years since I'd ridden a motorbike - but that's all right: the jacket was more than twenty years old too) I gone back to a default of tweed jackets, cotton shirts with double cuffs and links, with various pullovers for the Autumn and Winter months; and retained the black 501's, lace-up shoes etc. Sometimes I wear a waistcoat, tie, and watch-chain. However, in dress as in all things, the devil is in the detail.
But shoes....shoes are the mark of a gentleman, or a cad (or sometimes both). Alas, I cannot hie me down to Lobb's and say to Lobb and his minions: 'you may shoe me, but first I would you build me of my foot a last.' So I slouch about in footwear more suited to my station, built in sturdy Northamptonshire by Mister Church and family: or at least I did until I enquired about a new pair and found to my horror that my size was no longer catered for even in the custom-order rather expensive fashion that was the only way I could shoe myself comfortably. As an aside I have long, narrow feet, known in the footwear trade as 'broomsticks'. Size 11 (UK) and a 'C' (Church measure which is apparently a normal 'B') width fitting. You'd have thought I wasn't that unusual, really.
So now I finally have to bite the bullet and decide whether I can afford to get a shoe-maker to build me a last. Bugger. Or perhaps a couple of pairs of those insoles that you can get made might enable me to wear something perhaps a trifle more off-the-peg and therefore ill-fitting.
Bah. I know I've been spoiled by having had, through my life, shoes that fit. No doubt I shall hobble into late-middle-age in trainers.
But shoes....shoes are the mark of a gentleman, or a cad (or sometimes both). Alas, I cannot hie me down to Lobb's and say to Lobb and his minions: 'you may shoe me, but first I would you build me of my foot a last.' So I slouch about in footwear more suited to my station, built in sturdy Northamptonshire by Mister Church and family: or at least I did until I enquired about a new pair and found to my horror that my size was no longer catered for even in the custom-order rather expensive fashion that was the only way I could shoe myself comfortably. As an aside I have long, narrow feet, known in the footwear trade as 'broomsticks'. Size 11 (UK) and a 'C' (Church measure which is apparently a normal 'B') width fitting. You'd have thought I wasn't that unusual, really.
So now I finally have to bite the bullet and decide whether I can afford to get a shoe-maker to build me a last. Bugger. Or perhaps a couple of pairs of those insoles that you can get made might enable me to wear something perhaps a trifle more off-the-peg and therefore ill-fitting.
Bah. I know I've been spoiled by having had, through my life, shoes that fit. No doubt I shall hobble into late-middle-age in trainers.
