Shoes, Glorious Shoes?

As I raced into the house this morning, I tripped over a pair of shoes loitering in the porch. Unlacing my trainers, I realised that although one pair was ultimately the culprit for tripping me up, the entrance actually housed numerous pairs of footwear. It looked like an outlet of Shoezone. Large walking boots to dainty sandals, trainers to flip flops, they were all there cluttering up the entrance to Wooding Towers.

I've never really been one for footwear. As the owner of a pair of (reasonably) large tootsies I am just grateful that something fits and is comfortable. That was before I married into a family of huge feet - my dearly beloved takes size 13, me nephew is a 15 and my sister in-laws are both owners of size 10 feet. Poor old Naomi. Inevitably she too has large feet and it is her selection of footwear that dominates the porch.

For one that isn't really a footwear fanatic, I spent many of my years living in the home of the shoe industry - Northampton. I worked at the town's Museum for five years which housed the designated shoe collection, the largest collection of historical footwear in the world.  Housing 12,000 shoes from poulaines to Elton John’s ‘Tommy’ boots of the film Pinball Wizard  fame, the Museum was full of shoe related material. Interestingly, my husband's grandfather was a shoe-maker and we have some of the shoe lasts he used here at home. And one of my nephew's lives in a flat in a converted shoe factory.  So feet and footwear are definately part of our lives!

A few months ago, Naomi and I went to see Kinky Boots, the musical based on the true story of the  rescue of  a shoe factory, which altered its product to design fabulous, fetishistic footwear. Based on the true story of W.J. Brooks Shoe Company based in neighbouring Earls Barton, I spent the whole musical listening to Northamptonian cultural references and working out if the factory used as a back drop was based on the famous Tricker's factory in Northampton. Both Naomi and I loved the musical regardless of it's slight inaccuracies. And, of course, it is based in the town of her birth.

So is there a moral to today's blog post? Probably. Keep your shoes tidy, keep your eyes open, don't have too many pairs of shoes Imelda Marcos! And that from someone sitting here typing this blog with bare feet...and it is only Monday. Shocking.