Call me old fashioned.

Whilst out looking for a pair of shoes the other day I was treated to an amazing display of the type of control that children seem to have over their parents these days. The Mother obviously intimidated by her young charge was desperately trying to convince her brat that the Thirty pound trainers were just as nice as the eighty pound ones that he insisted he must have.

I quote: The Mother: “But Taurean, these will last you much longer and anyway I can’t really afford to pay that much for something you will wear out in a couple of weeks”. The brat: “I aint wearin em, no one wears em, there shit ones an I aint f**kin wearin em”. Followed by “You aint makin me luck a f**kin c**t, Ill phone the chile welfare on yer”.

Of course she bought the trainers and they walked happily from the store as though the exchange hadnt happened. Notwithstanding his total lack of respect for his Mother I would gladly have kicked his shaved head in just for his selfishness. It would have been nice to make him (When he had recovered from the kicking) wear pink sandals for the rest of his worthless life, but alas I had no control over him, no more than his Mother did.

As I sat in the café enjoying a cup of lukewarm coffee, I reflected on the type of footwear that as a kid I wore in the fifties. There was of course the sensible, strong, well wearing, black shoes that did for both school and visiting relatives. These were usually bought on the yearly pre Whit week trip to Dawson’s gents outfitters. Where along with the shoes new underwear, a shirt and tie and of course the inevitable badly fitting suit would be purchased on tick.

This lot did for the whole year. By the end of which after numerous bowls of pea and ham soup and countless games of football in the fresh air I had grown so much that it looked like I had gone swimming in my suit and then trekked through the Gobi desert shrinking the suit to my body. The whole thing would be repeated the next year.

For general play we would wear golloshas or plimsolls as Teachers liked to call them, golloshas sounded more exciting to me, the word rolled of the tongue, it had guts, it gave the impression of speed, it smacked of spies and secret agents. Where as the word plimsolls tended to veer toward tottering on ones toes whilst pirouetting or being elegant whilst walking. One thing I was sure of and that was that whether I was a goody or a baddy when playing cowboys and Indians with my pals, I wasn’t going to be either in plimsolls. So golloshas it was and anyway those little black canvas and rubber shoes were great for creeping up on the enemy and surprising them.

Then there was my favourite type of footwear that sadly seems to have dissapered these days. Baseball boots, these things were the coolest shoes of their day. They came up over your ankles, were laced all the way and had neat round rubber patches on both sides, best of all you could get them in different colours, a rare thing in the fifties. They were the secret to winning races, for some reason they gave the power of speed to anyone who wore them. Who donned baseball boots became the flash.

Of course in those days no self-respecting kid would be without a pair of Wellington boots. You could only get black ones then. They left a red ring around your leg just below your knee and smelled to high heaven, were murder to put on and even worse to get of, but the range of things you could be whilst wearing them was huge. You could be a jack booted German soldier, a spaceman exploring Mars, or a scientist fighting monster bugs. They gave you license to splash through puddles on rainy days, and even (if you so wished) to fill them with water and splosh around until you got washerwoman’s feet and gave you a blister.

How things have changed, how kids have changed, how adults have changed, I think the only thing that hasn’t changed is that you can still get Wellington boots. In different colours.