New Boots

[Anthony Simon]

So, I was in one of my local Marks and Spencer today. I wanted to buy some knee length boots - but, when I got to the store, I found they'd moved the shoe section and shrunk it. They didn't have knee length boots. Looking around, I had however seen lots of ankle length boots - including some that I quite liked.

So, alright, they didn't have what I wanted, but maybe a pair of those would work. I was aware that I was looking for something to partner with a long skirt - and, although knee-length would have been my default, really there was no reason that ankle-length might not work. Returning to that section of the store, I saw some kind of blond(y) leather-look ones that seemed quite classy to me.

I tried them on and walked around in them. There's practically no-one in the store - and anyway, I'm not too bothered at that point. So they seem pretty good, though I think I'm going to have to wear thicker socks to get to the right fit (This works out when I try them at home). In the mirror they have this dinky kind of look and make my feet look smaller, which is quite an achievement.

I'm sold. But, thinking I'm here now and might as well check out the rest of the stock, I do that. I carry on wearing the dinky boots because it's easier (they're zip-up) than taking them off and putting my guy shoes on and tieing them up - in case I find something and have to take them off again.

There's this woman wandering around, who I've previously smiled at, but now she comes up to the ankle-length boots section and starts to talk. I'm saying this is a good price for the boots (just under half-price) because it's the end of winter and she says that you buy this stuff in summer as well.

Then she says look at the finish (on the other lines) and I can see that, despite nice colours etc. there's quite a lot of cheap looking stuff (they're poorly finished). Which, as it happens, is not the case with the boots I'm wearing.

After that we move on to talking about the weather (a very British topic). I'm saying this is the week the weather in the UK is going to move from winter to spring. Because it's going to be (relatively) cold at first and then move to something a bit warmer. She pulls out her mobile phone and looks at the weather - and can't really see that. So I say look at the night-time temperatures, that'll tell you.

She gets the point and then says "Nobody goes out at night." I say I do, it's when I get my food. So she wishes me a good evening, which I reciprocate - and that's the end of the conversation.

Anyway, the point of all of this is I've been in that store before (when they had a bigger shoe section) and was clutching these women's shoes. A woman looked at me, smilingly, and you could see she wanted to talk. "Who is this person?" was what was on her mind. But I didn't feel up to it and left it.

Today there was the same kind of vibe - "Who is this person? This is interesting" and the conversation came quite naturally out of that. It helped that we were smiling at one another.

When I tried the boots with the skirt at home, they worked quite nicely, I thought.

[Diana Michelle]

Great story Anthony and glad you had a good experience.

I wear ankle boots with skirts of all lengths and I think they sometimes look better than taller boots. How about a picture?

[Anthony Simon]

Thanks Diana. To be honest, I haven't really been in a full dressing up and taking pictures mode for a while (my last pic is from 2016). I'm more "Who am I? What am I?" at the moment - and this was part of that.