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SOLEMATES
Look upwards of a person wearing training shoes and do a quick assessment. Do they look like heart attack material with or without Spandex? Most of the ‘trainers’ I see are worn by ‘hoodies’ or young oiks who hang around cashpoints waiting to mug people to get money to buy solvents, and not I might add, to be used to mend a puncture on their bike. The Olympiad footwear is merely for a purpose to scarper when the Plod arrive.
It fills me with confusion as to how trainers came about. Let’s look at the history of the contemporary ‘ego-shoe’ and see exactly when they evolved into what we now know as more than a fashion accessory than a athletes attire.
The first rubber soled shoes called plimsolls were developed and manufactured in the United States in the late 1800s. In 1892, nine small rubber manufacturing companies consolidated to form the U.S. Rubber Company. Among them was the Goodyear Metallic Rubber Shoe Company, organized in the 1840s in Naugatuck, Connecticut. This company was the first licensee of a new manufacturing process called vulcanization, discovered and patented by Charles Goodyear. Vulcanization uses heat to meld rubber to cloth or other rubber components for a sturdier, more permanent bond.
On January 24, 1899, Humphrey O'Sullivan received the first patent for a rubber heel for shoes.
Plimsolls had a variety of uses in my schooldays, chiefly for corporal punishment. I disagree with ‘getting the slipper’ as it was called. Think of the uneven wear of your own pair if you were always disobedient. If, indeed it was a ‘slipper’ then one would not associate a good whacking with a furlined and tartan foamed sole. More at home, at home at home, at home, in the gentle jaws of a well trained Golden Retriever. Would man’s best friend recoil with its masters demand.. “Fetch my slippers… that’s a good boy!,” fill the canine with dread? Not in these shoes.
Plimsolls were sexy. I remember watching girls in gymslips wearing them playing tennis and I would stare at the flushcheeked nymphs from outside the courts, wrestling with my pubic urges. Boy, did some of those girls know to turn an ankle. So, when it had been bandaged, they came out of sickbay and I would stand at the best vantage point “playing pocket billiards” and still get the same familiar stirring of the loins.
Aprt from time I found myself inexorably caught in the chainlink fence around the groin area, making me damp and late for Biology.
I loved baseball boots. A strange anomaly, as back in the sixties British boys had no idea how baseball was played. To me it looked like a load of big girls blouses playing ‘rounders’. Baseball is for gay people who are ‘very scene’.
I used to wear my black canvas boots for everything. When I was the fragile and forgettable age of 28 my Mother caught me in my twin sister’s party frock and matching frilly knickers. I looked like a cross between Russell Crowe and Cindi Lauper.
Or, “Gladiator goes to the Proms”
I know some individuals of the ‘purple rinse brigade’ who have kept their convent ‘plimmies’ for their day care centre ‘Jazzercise’ on a Tuesday. “Gentle exercise to seize up on.”
Now such hi-faluting sportswear manufacturers as ‘Reebollox’ and ‘Daddyhas’ have all jumped on the bandwagon and catering to designer consumer fever.
In simple terms. The chance to be ‘labelled’ by wearing labels. I can walk down the road in my High St and just by looking at the ensemble of a youngster what sort of little shit he or she is.
For example if you see a Nike airhat on a boy he only has three ASBO’s as opposed to a toddler in a Naf Naf romper suit who is just some single mothers screaming little bastard.
Now, across the road I see a teenager girl with ‘England’ on her football strip which usually indicates she is a truant and a shoplifter.
Right ahead coming straight towards me is the dirty little trout from number 83 with a navel ring and Fila shoes. She has been through more hands at sixteen than a stolen cellphone, and more kneetremblers on the common than an epileptic grasshopper.
I know these are sweeping generalisations but because we live in a liberal and diverse society, stereotyping just mean we don’t have to waste time making polite conversations anymore to people who don’t deserve to breath the same air as me.
Sick Chiropody. (Latin ref: “She Robbed me” said quickly)
Talking of feet. At what stage does the anti depressants kick in to be interested enough at looking at people’s gammy feet? Verucas. Bunions. Ingrowing toenails. Athletes foot. Hard skin. Corns. Trenchfoot. Gangrene. Elephantitis. Please God. It’s not a great career move for squeamish people is it? And they stink too? So if you are a foot fetisher can you substitute a wank for Gorgozola Blue vein cheese stuffed in each nostril, followed by liberal amounts of grated Parmesan under the foreskin. A couple of lines snorting dermatological footpowder, and during the throes of orgasm a pumice stone shoved up your arse tapered end last.
Chiropody must be some great feat.
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