THE SIZE OF IT

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33803, 27 March 1975, Page 28

THE SIZE OF IT

All his life he had; never been hard to please about footwear. All he' had ever wanted on his] feet were shoes that fitted well, looked weu,| lasted well, and were; available to him at the! right price. He had! always found, though., that fit and appearance! were in danger of being, mutually contradictory. That is to say, he would muse, when shoes looked snug on his feet so that they attracted admiring glances (his admiring glances in shop windows) they tended to be so short that his toes felt curved over like a bird’s claws on the roost. This was not comfortable but, having made the error in size, he would suffer until the shoes were honourably worn out: he was an ethnic Scot. When the shoes were! positively comfortable to j his feet in the shop he would be likely to find! that, once they were! broken in, they were) sloppy to wear. The uppers formed creases of I at ’east one row greater; than normally, and the. welts would be ready to 1 snag on the carpet as he walked. For the currency!

liof these shoes he would .'have to pack them with ,i in-soles. Of shoes that were I variously too short, too ■ long, or just right, he : preferred shoes that were (just right. The difficulty I was to find shoes of that (kind each time. He knew they existed ■I — he had had some wonderful fits in his many ; years — but it was one ; thing knowing this and ; something quite different : to recognise them actu- • ally in the shop. He would know after two days walking about town i in them, but what was the use of that? There are i shops for new shoes, and . second-hand shoes — but ■ no shops for tried shoes. Once, when he was I younger, he had run across a posh store with i a kind of X-ray machine by means of which he could view his encased J feet to decide whether the (shoe he was trying gave the right room for his I toes. i He was not good at interpreting what he saw, and he persisted with this ' device only because of ; the dubious satisfaction ,he derived from seeing this metatarsai bones and ■ phalanges wriggling about ■jin a green lake.

i He desisted only when i he heard something about risk of sterility from such ; a machine and, being sen- ) sitive about the matter at ! the time, never went near i the place again. At last he began to t rely on formal shoe sizes to guide his purchases. i He had been a long - time coming to such a •’ simple solution only bei cause he found in--1 explicable differences in t sizes between one manu- - facturer and another. e After wavering between a sizes 9 and 9j he had i finally made up his mind s that 9 was his size, and e he stuck to it — and i prospered. t Recently he went to buy some imported shoes. s He confidently asked for i a 9. The proprietor was i apologetic: the sizes were e metric now. Would he el like to try a 43? 1' In an orgy of trying on 3 he dithered between a 43 and a 44. finally settling slfor the latter. He has t now worn the shoes for a few days and he knows 1 (that 44 is too sloppy. fj He thinks he will try ’‘size 43 next time. But he ?,is discouraged; he feels [that he has been put back 120 years.