Slow Life | 18 April 2009

Possibly, the shoe was where it all started to go wrong for us as a species. Possibly, I say, the shoe represents the end of paradise. Possibly, we donned our size 12s and stomped right out of Eden. There we’d been, running barefoot through the trees with the sun on our faces, reconnecting with mother earth at every stride, a part of it all, part of a vast system that fitted us perfectly, until that very moment we stepped out of the invisible glove, out of the sensual world and into our shoes. Certainly, I’m happiest in bare feet, with nothing in my pockets. I mean, kick off your shoes and empty your pockets and you’re on holiday, back in a jungle where nothing can happen except nice things and dreams.

I tell you this because I had to buy some shoes this week and it was irritating me. I had other things on my mind, other fish to fry, which is the way it should be and the way I like it. I get excited quite easily but not often about shoes. My wife, on the other hand, would buy shoes for fun, at any opportunity. She usually buys all the shoes in our house. I suppose that’s one of the great things about marriage, playing to each other’s strengths. Since we moved to the country I have started to enjoy buying things at places where you have to add the VAT on to the marked price. So I’m the one who gets to buy all the concrete and fence posts.

My friend, who lived in a castle surrounded by thousands of acres of Eden-like paradise, giving him a perspective wide enough to be able to focus on matters of high order, once advised me to spend as much as I could afford on a good pair of shoes and a good bed because, as he said, if you’re not in one, you’re in the other. I always cherished that line. He died, something completely unforeseen, in the bath. It was doubly terrible. Died, and took his best line with him.

Anyway, I took his advice and bought a rock star bed from Harrods about ten years ago. It arrived about nine years ago. It was the first thing I ordered when I started to rebuild the house completely, but the builders were long gone by the time it arrived. A very nice man from the contemporary furnishings department came round on a weekly basis to tell me what was happening, but I was quite fed up about waiting a year for a bed and, much as I have loved the place since I was a child, I haven’t been back to Harrods very often since.

So, I needed some new running shoes. I’ve worn out my old ones getting my bikini body back. I wanted to get a pair that fitted, not unreasonably, and the only place that I could find where they would measure my feet was Harrods. I remembered my dear old friend as I found myself heading back there in search of a good pair of shoes.

It took me two hours to get up to the fifth floor. And I thought all I needed to make me happy were fence posts and concrete. Wow, I was wrong. I fell under a spell. I bought an orange as big as my head and was seriously considering ‘investing’ in a cut-price carpet when I noticed the time.

In response to my question, the man said that they weren’t measuring feet at the moment. The machine was broken. I was just about to tell him that I’d spent the entire afternoon messing around on the slim pretext of needing to be here to get some shoes that might fit me, when it got worse. He’d have to film me running. ‘Running! What! Here? Now?!?’ He reassured me that they would certainly have a pair that fitted, and that the filming was in some way essential. I calmed down gradually and had to admit that maybe it sounded sensible. I was, after all, in search of sensible shoes.

After a quick burst on the treadmill in my suit we watched my paddles flap around in slow motion on a big screen. He knew many things and had lots to tell me. This foot goes this way so you’ll need such and such a wotsit and that foot goes like so, as you can see, but we can sort it out with this widget here. It took the best part of an hour to Cinderella me up with exactly the right pair of slippers. Goodness knows how many pairs they must have in the stockroom. At 85 quid my new shoes suddenly struck me as one of the great bargains of modern civilisation, like lunch at Le Gavroche or chartering a light aircraft. Not exactly cheap but absolutely amazing value for what you get. Not quite as good as no shoes, but close.