mouldy old

As far as I can remember these were the sixth pair of boots of this general variety, separate from walking boots (proper, leather) and walking boots (suede/nylon, specifically Hi-Tec "trail"). This was the second pair of Caterpillars which I only moved onto as the cheapy Polish army surplus boots from the army surplus shoe shop ceased to be available, and the type I'd had before this pair (replaced when the sole wore away and it turned out to be almost as much as a new pair to replace the sole unit) was similarly no longer sold. I'd moved to the Polish boots from the Hi-Tecs after a few terms up here as predominantly urban use was making the heels erode much too quickly to be economical. Whilst the soles of the Polish boots weren't replaceable they only cost about twenty pounds per pair and lasted up to a year. These worked okay for a few years, spanning the end of university and occasional use when I started work but then suffered some form of breakdown and suddenly started ripping the hell out of the backs of my heels and generally being incredibly uncomfortable, though it's quite likely that this was in some way due to altered foot-shape due to altered foot-use, no longer walking between lecture theatres, libraries and labs every other hour and instead having to compress my perambulatory activities into the hours remaining either side of the working day, my first job being the stupid kind where the time and duration of breaks and lunchbreaks were fixed and monitored respectively. Before they became unwearable I'd kept them as they represented a link to the comfortably-dressed-how-I-wished times of the previous five years, and helped to balance out the fact that I had had to start wearing a fecking tie again for the first time since leaving school.

Gradually, the need to be able to pop out for air and walks without ending up with knackered feet and the fact that I was no longer heavily overdrawn meant that I bought new shoes for wearing to work, sometimes boot-style but usually as light and bouncy as possible (whenI had any choice and didn't have to just get whichever pair were wide enough). This style of boot had another disadvantage (as well as the general clumpiness) in that the lace-hooks at the top had a habit of ripping the hems of employment-trousers, a problem never noticed with the more robust and practical trousers I wore as a student when not wearing shorts. Eventually I started cycling more often than walking and leaving work-clothes in the locker at work, where smaller footwear fitted better.

They've been in a bag in a box down the side of the bed for the last few months and should really have been selected for throwing-out this afternoon when I was hunting through the boxes for the power supply for the scanner (primarily required in order to scan my graduation photo (in which these boots were worn but not visible), taken ten years ago today) and also taking the opportunity to compact and repair the box-stacks (slightly haphazardly-stacked by someone who wasn't me) but, despite the fact that there are now small patches of mould growing on them, I'd still prefer to keep them for a bit longer.