I'm strange about shoes...

Friday 22nd August, 2008

I am too. And I don't mean I am strange in that girlie "I can't go to New York until I can afford Jimmy Choo's" kinda way, I mean to me shoes are... earthy.

OK OK don't tune out, I am serious. If you think about it, shoes are the thing that connect us - quite literally and physically - to the earth. And yes, I do sometimes find strappy lil girly things that somehow do it, but more often than not if the temperature is somewhere a little above freezing, you will find me in a pair of Birkenstocks.

And not to be a brand-whore, but specifically Birkenstocks; copies do not patch it.

So on this random Augustian Friday, I replaced my Birkenstocks. I took the sweaty, cracked, unheigenic dark brown Birkenstocks that had been given to me on my Amsterdam Birthday (Feb 2nd, 2006) by my old work friends from the Flying Pig - "so that I would remember them every step of my adventure", or so the card read - and bought a shining new pair... exactly the same.

And I had to have a lil moment for the old ones... a lil do-it-yourself ceremony. I stood outside the Portuguese shopping mall in Lisbon, people milling about either side of me doing their business, and me standing there like a maniac saying goodbye to my shoes...

A quiet moment of reflection, for all the days and nights spent treking unfamiliar streets in totally foreign places... for all the dancefloors where all around me are pretty lil things in pretty lil shoes, and me in my clunky ol' faithfuls... for the fact that they don't slip in the wet, don't blister in the heat... A quiet moment of reflection for those beautiful souls who gave me those shoes, and who had, in fact, come with me every step of those years.

It was about the only thing I achieved that whole week actually, given that I had been laid out with a post-Sziget (music festival) flu the whole time I was in fair Lisboa. I slept, I wandered, I eased my way into Portugal slowly and quietly, and I said goodbye to a pair of shoes.