Warm Walking

What a time it is.
What a time when an unhinged arsehole is leader of the free world.
What a time when not agreeing to a war is an act of sedition.
What a time when a right wing journalist can stand at a Washington podium and spout hate.
I want to write fun stuff but can’t find the time in this time of noise.
The seers and esoterics say we are in chaos, that the world order is changing.
Hold onto their words. Don’t get involved – believe in Peace, and yet I’m wavering.
If I’m wavering the rest of the fucking world is feeling dodgy. Like balancing on a bicycle with one flat wheel.
I was ruminating how simple life seemed when I as 10.
1959. We queued in Sainsbury’s the women behind the cheese counter, their hair under hairnets, sliding wire through big blocks of cheese. Woolworths was open and buying broken biscuits was a weekly treat.
Walking in all weathers was easy. That’s what we did.
Our house was up a steep hill. Fancy detached houses giving way to 24 new council homes.
Us working classes were rehoused in what felt like mansions.
Those council houses now go for £1.3 million.
Up the hill with string bags full of shopping. Vegetables and broom handles. Walking out of the town centre, if the bus was an hour away, always an option.
Nobody complained.
Up the hill past the farm where milk churns, full of fresh warm milk from the cows, stood in the warm kitchen whilst litters of kittens skittered around. The farm house smelt like newly baked bead.
Walking past Anna Neagles house, an anointed actress who flouted around in her 50’s clobber, was a juxtaposition of the rich and the poor.
Dark bricks and chimney pots. Bay windows and money. Our house was square with a built in gas heater.
Walking up the hill was an aerobic exercise. May mother had grown up in the flat lands of Aldgate, she teetered on the top of the hill expecting to fall off into a canyon. We had to hold her steady.
Walking down the hill was a regular occurrence. If my fathers second hand car didn’t start, after a gang of us kids pushed it, walking was the only option.
Inevitably Major Evans would stop and offer us a lift. Turning the engine off at the crown of the hill and free styling to save petrol.
Walking past dewy spiders webs glittering in the morning sun.
Past the farm house. Down the hill towrds the grammar school.
Comforting groups of kids from left and right. No knives, no phones, no madness, Just school kids in uniform.
When it rained we all smelt of wet dog. The corridors misting up, hair wet and the smell of damp wooly jumpers.
What a time it was.
Simple and ordered. Children were kids and adults were old before their time.
I sound like an old maid. But the simplicity of it all.
Walking up the hill with a wooden broom pole and a string bag of potatoes and greens.
I wore orange t-strap shoes. Bought in St.Albans. I loved them. At school I took them off preferring to walk barefoot keeping those orange delights in tact. I would wash the soles, put them in my desk till home time then tiptoe around the puddles on the way home.
If my mother and I missed he 358 bus, they came every hour, rather than wait for 59 minutes we walked.
I wore yellow cut off jeans and my orange t-straps.
‘I meed the toilet’I said. Nobody called it the loo in them days.
‘What do you want to do?’ asked my mother.
‘Can I wee as we’re walking?’
‘If you want to?’ Said my mother
‘Yes.’
‘Then go for it.’
So I did.
Walking past the school and up the incline I just relived myself. Like a babe in nappies I thought nothing as the warm piddle ran done my legs into my shoes.
A moment of total freedom. My mother didn’t care and I enjoyed the anarchy of it.
By the time we got home I was cold and my orange shoes were squelching..
My shoes were never the same again.
When I started on the food show we went to South Molton Street to buy makeup and clothes. There in a shop window was a pair of orange patent Mary Janes. I bought them as an homage to my t-straps. I’ve still got them.
I also have a pair of navy blue canvass shoes, a yellow and orange stripe on the toes. 1962, the Beatles belting out ‘Please Please Me Do’ and my excitement as we walked into the Watford shoe shop.
I’ve still got them.
I don’t need to buy shoes anymore. Time it was when I stood outside Russel and Bromley and drooled over their collection of footgear.
I have two massive bags of shoes for the charity shop.
High heels, kitten heels, red leather, yellow leather pricy shoes and a pair of sequinned boots from a telly programme from 1970.
I have shoes with strawberries, that dangle, on the toes, from a hip shop in Brighton. They all look beautiful but are difficult to wear.
I’m 77 in a few days time, my feet have aged with me, my shoes are a symbol of youth and agility. Hard to part with.
Purple high heels and orange brocade boots. I’m not sure the charity shoppers will benefit from my past purchases.
At least I’m being honest about my frailty.
Unlike the orange cockwobbler who is about as mature as a wedge of Stinking Bishop soft rind cheese.