I need them for a wedding this weekend. They are nice shoes. Decent price, grown-up looking ones. Proper laces and no wee lights at the bottom or wheels on the soles.
I needed new shoes for at least 4 months. I didn't want to buy them, though. But now I did. I am not going to wear them 'til the wedding. I would ruin them.
I hate shopping for clothes.
How can one be a shopaholic? Alcoholic is better. Shopping does not give me a buzz. It's shite. Food shopping is good. I used to go with my ma when I was a wee child on a Thursday night, and I'd buy a comic and help my ma with the groceries. I'd get stuff I liked.
Once I managed to get my ma to buy me a cheese in the shape of a sausage. It was a smoked cheese. I thought I was fuckin' class. I had to get her to buy me it, as I was 7, and had no way of paying for the cheese. I could have saved my communion money, I suppose.
But I was never a saver.
It was a nice cheese. I thought I was Keith Floyd or something. I knew fuck all about anything. I knew slightly more than I know today.
I look back, and I haven't really changed, in this respect. I still enjoy food shopping and buying comics. I even go shopping with my ma when I'm at home. I like it.
My poor old shoes, but, discarded now like wee dogs in an RSPCA advert. They were fucked, though. Nothing lasts anymore. There are no more cobblers (this isn't true). Everybody throws everything out.
Horrifyingly, my old shoes started skittering about the house when they saw the new pair. Tina ran screaming into the bathroom and locked the door, screaming "Kill them!".
Kill them.
They were scraping at the door to try and get out and run away. One had shat all over the floor. I wasn't having this.
I'm not a violent man, but shiting all over the new mat was a sickener.
I got a spade from the shed and battered the shoes to death. Just fucking walloped them with the spade, the broad end of it.
I put the remains in a plastic shopping bag and left the bag in a neighbour's wheelie bin.
When I came back into the house Tina was still in the bathroom. I said come out, now, it's over. They're gone. They're away, the new shoes are here. The good new shoes for the wedding.
Sarah put her fist in her mouth and gurgled.
Tina and I looked at each other for a long, long time, without saying anything.
"No more new shoes, love. I can't do this again".
She agreed.
Tina put Sarah to bed, then, because it was the time for that.
She's too young to know about shoes, or any of that business. She likes her bare feet, in fact. She's always kicking off her socks. Why does she do such a thing?
I thought about this, then, and quietly read my comic, eating my small cylinder of smoked cheese.
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