A letter from a reader

At 67, I was checking the forecast four times a day to decide whether I was allowed out

For twenty-two years I have written the weather on the kitchen calendar every morning, one word in the little square, and that is as close as I have ever come to writing anything. I am not a writer. And I have never thought it my business to tell another woman what she ought to put on her feet.

But three different women asked me about my boots by the lock on the canal on Sunday, in the pouring rain, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

It started last winter, though I did not notice it starting. The calendar squares began to say rain, rain, drizzle, rain, and underneath them I stopped writing where I had been. The Tuesday market. The long walk with the dog. June's for lunch. Somewhere in there, the weather had started making my decisions for me.

It was my sister June who put her finger on it. She had come for the day in October, and she watched me stand at the kitchen window with my phone for the third time before eleven o'clock.

Maggie, you have looked at that forecast four times since breakfast. It is not going to change its mind.

She was right, and it stung. I had become a woman who waits in the car. Geoff would take the dog round the field while I sat with the heater on. I told myself it was sensible. It was not sensible. It was wet feet, and I had let wet feet make me smaller.

I did not choose that. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides to stop going out. It happens one grey morning at a time, until your sister catches you checking your phone for permission.

How it happens

I was never a fair-weather sort. As a girl I walked to school in all weathers and thought nothing of it, and I once stood through an entire village fete in a thunderstorm because I had promised to run the tombola.

What changed was not me. It was the choice I was being offered.

Go and look at what there is for a wet day at our age. On one side, wellingtons. Heavy, cold, a battle to get on, and you cannot very well walk into the café or the chemist in them. On the other side, the smart little ankle boots, which look lovely in the shop and let the rain in at the first puddle.

So you do what I did. You wear the nice ones on dry days, you keep the wellies for the dog, and on every day in between you simply stay at home. Nobody notices. That is rather the trouble.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I got most wrong, and I think a lot of us have.

I thought the problem was the rain. I thought I had got older and softer and could not face it any more, and that was simply how it was going to be now.

It turns out that was never the rain.

It was my feet. Cold feet and damp socks will ruin a morning faster than any weather, and I had spent years choosing between boots that kept me dry and boots I did not mind being seen in. Nobody had ever handed me a pair that did both.

Dry enough for the towpath, smart enough for the café afterwards, and easy enough to get on that I would not think twice. It took me until 67 to realise that was all I had been missing.

The boots are called the Clare

They are from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now.

They are called the Clare. A soft padded ankle boot in a deep navy blue, the colour of a good winter coat, with a zip straight down the front, a little gathered band at the ankle and a warm plush lining inside. They do them in black, brown, light brown and a cheerful red as well, which I will come back to.

They are waterproof, which I did not quite believe until I had stood in the puddle at the end of our drive on purpose to find out. The sole is non-slip and grips properly, on a wet towpath and on the church steps alike. The lining is soft and cushioned, so my feet were still warm and comfortable after two hours out. And the zip goes all the way down the front, so they are on and off in a moment, with no sitting on the back step wrestling with anything.

That is really all there is to them. They are not complicated. They are just boots that somebody thought about.

What happened at the canal lock

I wore them for the first time on the Sunday walk along the canal, in the kind of rain I would have watched from the window a month before.

Geoff and I walked the long stretch with the dog, all the way down to the lock. A narrowboat was going through, and three women were sheltering under the bridge while it did. All three of them asked me about my boots. One of them was Lorna, who has worked that lock for fifteen years and has, to my knowledge, never passed comment on anything but the water level.

She looked down at my feet, looked at the sky, and said I looked like I had meant to come out in this. From Lorna, that is a speech.

What I noticed more than the asking, though, was that I stopped thinking about my feet altogether. I walked through the puddles instead of round them. We went on to the pub at the next bridge and I sat by the fire in them and nobody would have guessed where I had been.

The next morning I put them straight back on to take the dog across the field, and I did not look at the forecast once. That is the rarest sort of boot. The one that takes you through the mud and into the café, and feels right in both.

Three things I have learned since

One. The zip is the whole point. It runs right down the front, so you can open the boot wide, step in and zip up without bending double or hopping about the hall. I had not realised how much I dreaded putting boots on until I stopped dreading it.

Two. Tuck your trousers in. They are the right height to take slim trousers tucked inside, which keeps the hems out of the puddles and looks tidy with it. Over jeans works just as well on a dry day.

Three. Order your usual size. They come from a UK 2 up to a UK 8.5. I am a 6 and the 6 was right, with room for a thicker sock on the really cold mornings.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me suspicious.

The Clare is £45.95. It was £92.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because I have paid more than that for a pair of winter boots that let the water in by November.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and they have a sale on at the moment while the first of the autumn stock comes in.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and went and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if I am honest made me trust it rather more. One woman from Belper had written, “Walked the dog through a proper downpour and came home with dry socks. First winter in years I have not dreaded.”

Then I ordered the red pair as well, for the days when I feel brave.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat at my kitchen table with a pot of tea and the rain going sideways outside, this is what I would say.

If you have started checking the forecast before you let yourself go out, and you have quietly said no to more mornings than you would like to admit, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look.

Not because a pair of boots will change your life. They will not. But there is something in walking out into a wet morning because you want to that I had quietly given up on, and I would rather you did not give up on it too.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and the middle sizes are the ones that go first, which I found out because the 6 in red had gone by the time I went back and I had to wait for it. And the first of the autumn stock is already going, so I would not leave it until the weather turns.

The calendar says rain again this morning. Underneath it I have written: canal, with Geoff.

Maggie