New Shoes and the Green Box

When I was a child, my mother took me to Clarks in Liverpool city centre twice a year. Once in spring. Once in autumn. This was not shopping. This was an event. Sometimes it even included a visit to a cafe afterwards, which elevated the whole thing to something glamorous.

The Clarks shop measured your feet properly, using a metal sliding contraption that I adored, plus a ribbon-like strip to check the width. You did not guess your size. You did not negotiate. Your feet were placed on the thing, and the thing decided.

The shoes themselves lived on shelves that went all the way up to the ceiling. Floor to ceiling. I remember thinking this was the absolute height of excitement. An entire wall of shoes, rising upwards like proof that this was the best shop in the world, after the sweet shop.

When you chose your shoes, or more accurately, when you told the assistant which pair you wanted, she disappeared and then reappeared with a ladder. Or the ladder was already there, sliding along the shelves like in old libraries. I can’t quite remember. What I do remember is that it was thrilling. Someone was going upwards to retrieve exactly the right pair from a wall of infinite possibilities. Clearly, this was the best job in the world. You climbed ladders and brought people shoes. What more could anyone want from life?

I definitely wanted to work in a shoe shop when I grew up.

The most exciting pair I ever owned were red Clarks sandals. Red. Not boring old navy. Not drab brown. Red. They came in the sacred green Clarks box, which I carried home as if it were the Holy Grail.

And then came the rule.

Spring and summer shoes were not to be worn until Easter Sunday.

Why? I don’t know. Mum never explained. It was simply the law.

The shoes waited in their box in my parents’ bedroom, and I would occasionally sneak in, try them on, admire my feet and put them back again, as if they were hibernating.

I tried to reason with her. ‘But if I wear them now, I’ll get more wear out of them.’

The first time, she said it calmly. By the tenth request, it came through slightly gritted teeth, with a warning edge to it. ‘Yes, but less wear out of your winter shoes.’

On Easter Sunday, I finally wore them and spent most of the day looking down as I walked, admiring them.

The autumn and winter rule made more sense. New shoes could not be worn until the first day of school. That felt logical. Ceremonial, even.

Sometimes, if the assistant couldn’t find the requested shoes at the front of the shop, she would disappear into the back. How exciting. That mysterious back room, surely overflowing with foot-shaped wonders and infinite possibilities

I don’t know why I found it all so wonderful. I just did.
Even now, decades later, I know the difference between a pair of shoes that arrives with ceremony and one that should never have ordered. And occasionally, when I open a box and feel that small flicker of delight, I think of the ladder, sliding or carried, the green box and the red sandals and understand that some rituals never really leave us.