Boots

I went to the Van Gogh exhibition at the Tate Britain last summer. I am not usually so cultured and this is not my typical weekend. We went round and we looked at the stars and the town-scapes and the portraits. I enjoyed it as much as I ever enjoy art galleries, and I paused a little longer at the sunflowers than I did the others. At the end there were the smaller rooms with the smaller pictures. I turned round the corner and I saw the picture of a pair of boots. Yes, I thought. Yes. This means something to me. Boots mean something.

When I was a groom I had a pair of Australian redback boots that I wore until the soles fell off. I can still remember my first set of Aigles. (I get through wellingtons like others get through love affairs; each time I swear it is forever but my demands mean they soon split and leak and my eyes turn to the next promise of dry feet. Current love is for Nokians which are made of tractor tyres. I have high hopes that they are keepers.)

You can keep your stilettos, nothing makes you feel like you can take on the world like steel toe capped boots. Mine are from Screwfix which has the added bonus of making one feel like you are serious at getting stuff done. The downside is that they come in the smallest size of seven and even those are slightly big for me. Also, you will trip over everything for the first six months because wearing them changes the weight of your feet a bit. But still, I feel like I can do literally anything in these.

If you have smaller feet than me, Mole Valley farmers do dealer boots that go down to a size 6 and I think these are exactly the same as mine but without the steel toe caps. Even smaller than 6? The children’s ones go up to size 5.