bunn

Once upon a time there was a pair of ridiculous, tortoiseshell-coloured plastic shoes.
They were advertised in the Littlewoods Catalogue.
But nobody bought them.
And then they went to the Littlewoods Catalogue Shop in Liverpool, where unsold items went in the distant 1990's, to be flogged off at a considerable discount.
But nobody bought them. (This happened a lot to stuff from the Littlewoods Catalogue, which probably explains why it went bust).
The shoes got a sale sticker. And another, more-reduced sale sticker.
And finally, they were moved to the Extremely Discounted Shelf, where they were, if I remember rightly, priced at £2, or maybe even less.

shoes

I wandered past and picked them up, if I'm honest, probably first because of the price tag, but also because they were absurd and they amused me. So I tried them on, and I found them wonderful. They raised you high, a good deal more than 3 inches above the common herd, giving a feeling oddly like flying, and somehow were amazingly soft-fitting and light and comfortable. So I paid my £2 ,and took them away.

You could not walk far in them, because they had no strap to hold them on your feet, and if you swung along at any speed in them there was a chance that an absurdly-giant tortoiseshell coloured shoe would go flying off your foot and kill a pedestrian, and probably leave their wearer with a nasty twisted ankle too. But on those days when you just need to stand about or move short distances, they were perfect.

Sadly, after I moved to Cornwall, such days became few and far between, and I did not wear the ridiculous shoes as often as I would have liked to. But I wore them from time to time, and every time I wore them, I thought : These are wonderful and ludicrous shoes! I should wear them more!

This evening, I had to go to a meeting, which was held in a building not far from a handy carpark. I put on the wonderful shoes, for I knew I would not have to walk far. But even as I walked from the carpark to the meeting room, the shoes began to die. During the meeting, although I was sitting down practically the whole time, they passed away, leaving an unfortunate mess of black plastic bits on the carpet. The corpses held together, more or less, to deliver me back to the car and home, but there was no question that they were shoes no more, but merely chunks of disintegrating ...stuff.

Alas, poor shoes! You were brilliant, and I shall miss you.