First Footing

Taking your shoes off before you enter a house is the kind of social situation you never think about until it confronts you head on. In Muscat, it's so dusty and sandy that shoes can get in a right mess and many of my friends require the removal of the offending articles before stepping over their threshhold.

I never grudge this of course although it always makes me a little nervous along the lines of wondering just how smelly my feet might be and if there are any sweat marks prevalent on my socks. The uncomfortableness of this rare social custom makes me feel, well, uncomfy. It's unlikey I'd be refused entry were I to keep my shoes on, but the unspoken tension the very act of not removing my shoes would create would add much more uncomfiness to the proceedings compared to the alternative of simple removal.

I don't require people to remove their shoes when they come to my house. There's something just a little too personal about the process in my eyes.

I suppose there are certain instances whereby I might change my mind. If, for example, I invested in a big Persian carpet for a room in my house, I might be forgiven to expect visitors to remove their shoes before walking on it. They wouldn't have to remove their shoes for any other bit of the house, just this new bit. Fair enough, I'm sure you'll agree.

However, if it turned out after that having enjoyed countless enjoyable evenings in my house that visitors were to object to my new rule, and in objecting would start bleating and complaining and generally being unnecessarily rude as the very act of adding a carpet to a room which I wouldn't want them to walk on with dirty shoes upset them so much that they decided not to come back to my house on a matter of unjustifiably dramatic principle, I don't think I'd miss them too much.