New shoes?!

When you buy new shoes there is always a period of some one or two weeks in which they are clearly new.

Everyone will say, "New shoes?!" to you, with an unreal amount of glee, that is almost veering towards the manic. No other new item of clothing causes such a reaction, even haircuts rarely elicit such a response.

Why is this? Is it some latent primeval acknowledgement of the importance of shoes to protect our feet when chasing / running away from woolly mammoths or saber toothed tigers?

Regardless, for this initial new shoes time you are subjected to the endless finger pointing, the strange Cheshire Cat grins of happiness (or is that mockey), for the purchase of some new footwear. Only, when after two weeks, or there abouts, of wearing, and thus decay and dirtying from the trials and tribulations of modern footwear life, do the shoes cease to look new, and instead become old favourites, battered, worn in, scruffy. The comments cease.

Walking towards the tube on Sunday, my new shoes on display, glinting in the first clear sun of the year, a tall, manic looking man was striding towards me. Striding with that demented air some people give off. I could sense what was coming.

In a high pitched, slightly Mediterrrain accent he proclaimed, whiling point at my shoes: "NEW SHOES!?"

I nodded, and we passed.