Friday 20th May

A great single by Traffic from 1967 I think.  “And all that I knew was the hole in my shoe was letting in water.” Traffic were just another great band who somehow struggled in the Seventies, though I did buy a few of their records.

And occasionally down the years I too have had a hole in my shoe, sometimes indeed letting in water, before I bit the bullet and bought a new pair of shoes.  For a few years I only ever had one pair of shoes anyway, and at others I have had more than I could wear.  I always seem to have my favourites, however many may be languishing unloved and unpolished at the bottom of the wardrobe and automatically slip on the same raggedy and stained pair of espadrille-type canvas shoes every morning.  I do have some proper shoes I wear some evenings but have fallen into the habit since living here in France of dispensing with socks entirely.  Even on cold days I feel more comfortable going sockless, it is only when returning to England that I stuff a couple of pairs in my case and put on sensible outdoor shoes and socks for the flight back.

One of the perpetual complaints among the English living here is the state of the pavements, many broken or non-existent and many potholes are simply filled with small grey stones which have a habit of slipping over the gunwales of your shoes, so often I have to stop and knock out unwelcome guests from my footwear.  A couple of days ago I felt that old familiar prod of a stone in my shoe.  I quickly whipped off the shoe (well a slip of rubber and canvas if truth be told) and scooped out any contents.  No stone, so I put the shoe back on.  Still that prod of a stone so I repeated the process.  No, there definitely was a stone in there.  On closer inspection it wasn’t a stone at all but a nail, a tack really, point upwards with the head firmly embedded in the sole of my flimsy footwear and the point protruding rudely and about to enter the sole of my foot.  I managed to wriggle it out and now I have a hole in my favourite shoes, but looking at them, tatty as they may be, there’s still a few more weeks wear in them…..hope it doesn’t rain.