Kelly Rose Bradford: Sole-destroying outing

Aug 27 2008 Surrey Herald

It's nearly that time of year again: the time which strikes fear into the hearts of parents the length and breadth of the country, where insurmountable stress levels and stead-fast resolve do battle with the wiles and wills of petulant small people.

Yes, it is back to school shoe buying time.

What is it about shoe shopping that causes such extreme levels of dissent?

Why, for example, can pants and socks be purchased without incident, yet the mere mention of visiting the shoe shop causes civil unrest and mayhem?

I have been determinedly putting off getting Boy's new shoes for weeks, such is my dread of spending the best part of a day in a shoe shop along with 30 other fretful mothers and their stir-crazy off spring.

Not of course that this is a new phenomenon: I can remember the pain and anguish of getting my own school shoes each autumn and spring and the ensuing tears and tantrums as box after box of hideous, Cornish-pasty-with-a-sole style shoes emerged from the stock room, and were forced unceremoniously on to my unwilling feet.

Then the walk of shame would follow: those agonising steps up and down the centre of the shop under the watchful eye of your mother and the shop assistant, keenly looking for slippage around the heel, and barking out orders of "Pick your feet up" and "Walk properly" which of course was virtually impossible when being publicly paraded with pasties on your feet.

Next would come the painful pinching of toes from the vengeful assistant - vengeful because she obviously hated shoe-fitting time as much as the kids themselves; fingers would pound down on the ends of the shoes, desperately seeking out toes, which would then be crushed under the pressure of her thumb and forefinger in the name of 'checking for room to grow'.

Then, after trying on the shop's entire stock in size 8.5 Z or some other quite randomly generated fitting, the very first shoe, the one that was mooted and spurned some hours before, would be deemed the best fit and purchased. And you would cry all the way home.

It seems little has changed; although I haven't made it into the shoe shop with Boy yet, I have been doing a bit of undercover observation from the vantage point of a coffee shop opposite: the upset, the weeping, the arguments, the flouncing, it's all just as I remember it and it takes me right back to my own childhood.

So I am mentally and physically preparing myself for the day next week when Boy's school shoes are purchased. I have in place carefully laid plans and everything will run like clockwork - and it's an amazingly simple strategy: I'm going to go to the gym and let his dad do the shoe shopping . Well, he's always says he wants to be a hands-on father. Now he can be feet-on, too.