SHOES OFF?

Shoes off or shoes on in your house? Yesterday, Sammy told me that if you take your shoes off in a shoes-on house, you might as well be wearing your socks outside on the pavement.

I don’t want to judge. We take our shoes off. I did in the flat as well, although my reason was that I wanted to feel homely from the beginning, rather than any worry about dirty carpets or germs. So it does feel natural to slip out of the clogs at the door, and (in theory) straight into the slippers.

Let’s cut to the chase. Some people have smelly feet. I know this. At university, Daniel (not his real name), an enormous rugby-playing flatmate of mine, had trainers so bad that you just couldn’t breathe if you went past his door. The cleaners went on strike, environmental health put us on their watch list, and the rest of us had a whip round for hazmat suits and geiger counters. In the end it was the simple solution of Daniel getting a girlfriend that saved us.

Anyway the point is, feet can stink. As a young person, things like that really worried me - particularly what people would think if my own feet ponged to high heaven. Visiting someone else’s house was always risky if they asked me to take my shoes off, even if I knew full well that my socks were clean that day, and as far as I knew, so were my tootsies. A cold wave of terror would flood me on the doorstep.

In addition, it was the same kind of time when all the church groups I went to were intent on following Jesus’ example of washing each other’s feet! When it was announced unexpectedly at a worship practice night one time, I still remember a couple of people went white and fled to the toilets before everyone was asked to start undoing their laces.

These days, I figure it’s best to assume everywhere is a shoes-off house. Without thinking, I’ll slip out of my boots until someone says: “Oh don’t worry about shoes,” at which point I’ll probably slip back in, or just carry on with stocking feet and hope it’ll all work out.

To be honest, I quite like the Japanese idea of slippers for everyone. It’s okay if you think it’s a bit too passive aggressive, or ridiculous, but it would possibly solve a few problems if you knew there were a nice clean pair of slippers just inside the front door of the house you’re visiting.

I sometimes wonder what happened to Deniol. I’m pretty sure I know what happened to his trainers in the end. Though I do hope future archaeologists are very careful if ever they’re on a dig near my old university halls.