Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Things I Unexpectedly Suddenly Only Had One Of

Tip for high-powered executive types: when returning to work after an extended spell of AWOLity in the south of France, do not attempt to walk the entire mile from your flat to your swanky nu-meeja converted-factory office wearing tiny bejewelled flip-flops.

If you do this, one flip-flop will inevitably fall apart halfway, obliging you to walk the remaining half a mile along filthy London pavements in your bare feet. This will cause fully attired people to stare at you as if you were some kind of mad anarchist hippy, prompting you to smile in a zen-like fashion in order to conceal your feelings of awful humiliation exacerbated by unwelcome reminiscences of all those dreams you had where you turned up to school/lectures/work naked.

Actually it was quite a lovely feeling. Mm, smooth warm pavements.

I've got shoes on now though. Just in case anyone was worried.

20 comments:

surly girl said...

barefoot rocks, until you have to go to the loo.

'nuff said.

Billy said...

Flip-flops are evil.

Arabella said...

And they make people waddle like ducks.
(Except Patroclus, of course, who looks ravishing in them, or one).

Tim F said...

Patroclus is a mad, anarchist hippy!

Pass it on.

Smat said...

did you not give up on flipflops last summer?

Wyndham said...

Hmmm, feet. I can't make up my mind whether I like them or not.

Spinsterella said...

Sorry, shouldn't laugh. But I did.

Barefoot does indeed rock, Surly, if you're at home, or maybe on a beach or in a meadow or something suitably idyllic.

I don't think the mean streets of Shep's Bush quite fit the bill...

Anonymous said...

freakishly barefoot is one of life's pleasures in my mind

...

now...

west london girl... aren't you?

i want to go & see renaissance & it's on at the riverside cinema hammersmith tonight (wednesday) @ 8:25 (2 & a half hours away)...

i'm going, but i want someone to come with me so that we can take advantage of the 2for1 orange wednesday thing...

fancy it?

longcat

x

Unknown said...

Gah. I share your pain: the same happened to me. On a bike. Halfway up a hill. Between two tiny villages in Tanzania.

Still wear 'em, though. Some people never learn.

realdoc said...

The upside is that one less shoe means you are more likely to be an intellectual. (see cultural snow for clarification)

Anonymous said...

I once bought pretty shoes for a staff night out. Pretty, very high heeled shoes. I lasted for about an hour before I had to take them off. I spent the whole night pub crawling around Edinburgh barefoot. It was strangely liberating, until it took me 2 hours the next day to scrub my feet back to their natural colour.

Del said...

A smile makes a lousy umbrella. Also seems it makes crappy shoes. Oh well.

patroclus said...

Hello all. I must say I enjoyed being barefoot, although not sure about hygiene ramifications. Although I do remember voluntarily walking home barefoot last summer when it had rained torrentially on to the sun-baked pavements of W4 and W12. Lovely warm rainwater, mmm. Perhaps I am a mad anarchist hippy after all.

That film looks great, longcat (and reminds me I want to see A Scanner Darkly too), but sadly I was out at my tutorial last night.

Hannah: the thing I noticed about Africa is that nothing seems to matter there, not even sudden loss of footwear. Although I suppose that practically there are snakes and stuff to think about.

Err, obviously I'm not saying that people in Africa have nothing to worry about.

*continues to dig self into hole*

Tabby Rabbit said...

Er, what sort of person would give someone dissolvable flip flops... imagine that.

Tim F said...

Oh dear, Patroclus. You remind me rather of commentator Elton Welsby at the opening ceremony of the 1990 World Cup. Cameroon was represented by some comely ladies who, let's not put too fine a point on it, had their tits out.

"Here come the girls of Cameroon," babbled the dolt, "with their natural sense of rhythm."

patroclus said...

I know, Tim. I'm such a twat.

Also Wyndham: surely it depends on the owner of the feet, the aesthetic characteristics thereof, and the nature of the engagement with them?

Wyndham said...

My thoughts exactly. Feet can make or break a person in my opinion. Although I can't deny that most people look better with a pair.

Anonymous said...

the thing I noticed about Africa is that nothing seems to matter there, not even sudden loss of footwear.

I was about to leap hotly to the defense of my beloved continent, but then suddenly realised that, in fact, I teach my classes barefoot throughout most of the Cape Town summer, and no-one's arrested me yet... (although the department does occasionally give me funny looks).

Given the amazing ability of London to give you black-edged fingernails even if you don't touch anything all day, I wouldn't like to try the barefoot thing in London, personally.

patroclus said...

I didn't mean it in a bad way, extemporanea, it's just that when I was in Zimbabwe and Zambia it was all so relaxed that I couldn't even get very worked up about the fact that ex-Mr P and I were nearly killed by a hippo, or that I ineptly fell out of the whitewater rafting raft and was borne away down the Zambezi at the mercy of rocks and crocodiles.

Then I realised that that would have made me sound like an ignorant tourist, which is essentially what I was.

*battles with awful Western middle-class guilt*

Mind you, I suppose there wasn't a lot I could have done to depose Mugabe and restore order in the two weeks I was there.

Anonymous said...

Flipflops? They are called jandals.