Times columnist Matt Rudd examines the throwaway society through a hole in his Crocs.
How many pairs of shoes is too many pairs of shoes? A hundred? Definitely. Twenty? Probably. Ten? Five? The answer, it turns out, is two. Two pairs of shoes is one pair too many. It's profligate. It's unnecessary. Who do you think you are? The wife of a Filipino despot?
Before the Full Stop six months ago, I was quite the Imelda. Many trainers. A dubious collection of "you've still got it" statement shoes (lilac loafers and everything). And the painful suede numbers. I don't know why I bought them. A sale, probably. Or a sales assistant. Blisters upon blisters. And yes, I know high heels must be worse.
From March 23 I abandoned my ridiculous midlife shoe fetish and I've worn the same pair of shoes ever since. This wasn't planned. It wasn't an experiment in ungula abnegation. It just kind of happened. On the day the office was abandoned, I had only enough room left in my rucksack for a bottle of whisky or my sensible work shoes. Survival mode kicked in and I took the whisky. At home, in those early weeks, there was education to be mismanaged, loo rolls to hoard and sanity to preserve in the face of remote working on rural broadband. Who had time for lace-ups?
And so the shoes that came to the rescue were a pair of old canvas slip-ons. Crocs, to my sons' mortification. They had been languishing unloved ever since a big toe dug forward to freedom in the summer of 2016, but now they were back, offering practicality, calm and resilience. They looked absolutely awful but, magically, that didn't matter any more.