My Two New Boots

In the past week I've felt disgruntled as work has piled up and up, and special and important requests have flocked in from colleagues at an unprecedented rate. Because of our clients in the USA and because of the internationalization of Cyber Monday, we are beginning to feel the first simmering bubbles in the pressure cooker of Black Friday. (If this is an unknown 'holiday,' I'll explain that the Friday before Thanksgiving in the United States is popular as a day on which to buy things cheaply in seasonal sales, which means that an enormous volume of goods is sold. It is conveniently close to Christmas, so I gather that people will also buy their Christmas presents then. I have no idea why it is called Black Friday. Lately a 'Cyber Monday' has been added onto this weekend of unbridled consumption, for consumers who prefer to buy online instead of taking the trouble to travel to a brick-and-mortar store. A 'Giving Tuesday,' less relevant to my company, has entered the queue of shopping days too; consumers are encouraged to donate to charity.)

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Today I waited for and bolted down lunch within 6 minutes: a lightning-quick time in my personal opinion. Then I excused myself for the sake of a shopping trip. I managed within 30 minutes to go to the bank, travel three blocks to Karstadt, locate the correct floor for shoes, find a pair of ankle boots in what should be the right size, pay for these boots, and travel back to work again. It was needlessly suspenseful because I hadn't tried on the shoes. In the evening I did, and they fit.

My previous shoes are black leather flat shoes that Mama bought for me in Europe in 2003. My old shoes at that time were broken and it was painful to walk in them. I did so for eight excruciating hours in the city we were travelling in. (It was Florence, which is almost apt, although I'm not silly enough to think that I really emulated Savonarola's torments when he was burned at the stake.) The next day Mama took me into a shoemaker's shop and bought these shoes. It's too much information, but we were very short on money, so it's generous that she did.

A relative told me at least three years ago that I shouldn't wear them any more; the tongue was admittedly ripping away from the rest of the shoe leather. Bah, humbug, I replied internally, still feeling deeply indebted to the footwear that had saved my sanity a decade earlier.

At work I have noticed that the shoes are squeaky. They practically echo whenever I walk in them.

And recently I felt that my feet were becoming wet when I walked to work. My feet became grubby. I was sitting at my desk at work today and noticed that my feet were still whiffy, and still wet and chilled, even though the streets had dried. Furthermore, I could feel a wintry draft seeping through the (s/h)oles. I sprayed lavender air freshener into one shoe, but I prefer to honestly neutralize the source of odours.

So I outlined the 'dangerously Victorian state of affairs' to the coworkers who would notice my absence, and went shopping as mentioned above. Tactfully, during my explanation I left out the rich detail about stink that I have described here.

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A moral: It is obvious yet again that I will let some things escalate to a ludicrous extent before taking the trouble to do something about them. But I am proud that the events of this tale fell short of pneumonia.