SHOES !!!!!!

[Kim2s70-77]

Angela - you crack me up!!

[cj]

Rubbing the inside of a banana skin on leather shoes (and then rubbing it off!) is supposed to bring them up lovely. I remember frantic shoe polishing very early in the morning before we hopped off to the Lord Mayor's Show or St Matthews Day. DGE would not been pleased with mucky shoes on display in the band and, as his put-downs were legendary, I always felt it necessary to clean myself up before dawn on those particular occasions. Should have done it the night before but never learned.

Welcome back Cath

I hope the family are all keeping well and that we see you back here more often.

Thanks, Mid A 15. Family all fine apart from the winter vomiting bug that has run a course through us all over half-term. Beth is 15, Cora 6 and Theo is now 19 months and a real pickle. Keeps me on my toes. I never really realised how different boys are. Doesn't sit still for a second Have been thinking of you all though, floating out there in cyber-space.

[michael scuffil]

I've come late to this thread but one memory is the jumbo tin of polish kept in the bootroom. Polishing and showing up one's shoes every evening was part of learning to look after oneself and care about one's appearance. Only a few years after I had left it was clear this had gone by the board.

"only a few"?: Shoe inspections continued (in ThB) until at least 1964. That's 16 or so years after you left... I think the rot set in with senior/junior houses.

[Angela Woodford]

My son was about to join the Royal Engineers.

For years he had appeared in trainers with undone laces. Trainers with deeply engrained residues, through which climate change scientists could have traced the years of history of weather in the South East and then, with the happy cries of successful researchers, fallen upon upper layers of rich Devon mud. Trainers so richly fragrant that I had had to hide them in the garage before deodorising his bedroom and the porch in order to sell the house.

Then came the date of his Attestation.

He had, somewhere, one pair of black lace-up "smart" shoes. I dragged them from the depths under his bed; dusty and de-pressed. Now it was as if the genes of four generations of military Woodfords had struggled to the surface. My current husband egged him on with methods, hints, tips and theories of shoe magnificence from his Sandhurst days. Grandpa, at the other end of a glowing phone, took on a consultant's role.

In the L1V, we had, passed around during prep, a romantic novel called "Forever Amber" in which the heroine spent three days dressing for a ball in order to win back an errant lover. Now this dedication was being reenacted for three days before my incredulous eyes! Three days of massaging in Parade Gloss Polish with a beragged fingertip - spitting and doing goodness knows what other techiques with a furious dedication! The shoes were transformed from desolate to dazzling. I wished Her Majesty could have known of the earnest industry of her newest recruit.

Those shoes are now reverently preserved in his wardrobe. I go and admire them from time to time - my boy!