Just What We'll Do

Sigh. I've really lost my blogging mojo lately. It's not that I don't want to blog it's just... busy busy, you know how it is. So I thought I'd kickstart myself by blogging about a few of my favourite objects around the house and garden.

First up – my walking boots.

I thought of this when a forum buddy asked about favourite shoes. A thread full of pictures of beautiful footwear ensued, leaving me wishing not for the first time that my fat little feet and crappy ankles would allow me to wear shoes of gorgeousness like the beauties from Irregular Choice.

But no. I am forever doomed to sensible shoes, having inherited the weak knees, cankles* and wonky feet that plague the rest of the women in my family. I managed to be fashionable round about 1988 when suede brogues were all the go, and again during my DM and converse wearing salad days but otherwise I'm one of the croc wearing ugly sisters at the fashionista ball.

So my answer to the favourite shoe question was my walking boots. Not that they're beautiful or glamorous, far from it. Not even that they've done what they were designed for particularly; have I walked up Snowden or across the Pennine Way in them? Have I buggery. But we go back a long way, these boots and me.

I bought them for a sponsored walk in aid of the free Tibet campaign which a friend of mine was organising, eight years ago or so. Eldest son and I went into the camping shop and bought a pair of boots each, both size five. His dark blue, mine a rather lovely forest green. I turned up at the sponsored walk in them and my friend spent five minutes showing me how to lace them properly (NOT with the laces wrapped around the tops as I'd done) and off we wandered, a hot day across the fields and through the city which taught me the virtue of breaking in boots before using them properly.

While they were still young and smart-ish I wore them to work. Day in, day out running about a school from 7am until whenever the day was done. I've never been one for dress codes so where the other middle management wore suits, I crashed about in my walking boots. By then I was pretty sure that I didn't ever want to carry on up the greasy pole of promotion so being the Head of Year dressed as if I'd just done the garden didn't really matter to me. It should have done, but what became obvious a few months later was that I was suffering with the slow-burn form of ME so actually just getting up, doing a stressful job and being a lone parent was as much as my brain could manage without dressing (in my dad's words) like a pox-doctor's clerk for the privilege.

Then we walked up a hill in the Lake District; me, my newly engaged fiance Mr M and my boots. A gorgeous autumn day in half term, the trees all shades of pink through gold and the sky a clear blue. The path was hardly steep but we were overtaken by everyone else as I stopped to sit on a wall with my head between my knees every couple of hundred yards, trying to stop the faint woozy feeling and carry on. Families with toddlers and intrepid octogenarians strolled past us as I shuffled painfully to the top.

The next week, back in school, I went to stand up at the end of morning break and my legs wouldn't work. I fell back onto the chair, my heart pounding painfully, my head spinning and my legs just not there any more. I went home for what I thought was three days to rest but that was the end of my teaching career, more or less. We limped back a few months later, the boots and me, for 2 or 3 hours a week, my head still spinning. By then I'd forgotten how to write or spell properly so the bottom set year 9 class helped me write stuff on the board before I was driven home again to spend the rest of the day in bed in a dark room.

Now my boots are far too horrible to wear for anything other than actually going out walking. They are faded and rusty, the laces knotted where they've broken. We walk and walk and walk, nowhere very brave or hardcore but without thinking about it I spend the day on my feet, running after the children or walking around gardens and fields when I'm not at college or on placement training for my new career.

We've come a long way.


*In case you were wondering, cankles are calves plus ankles; ankles which are thick and ungainly and not really any different from the rest of one's lower leg.