A letter from a reader

At 68, I bought my husband shoes behind his back. He has worn nothing else since

This is a letter about my husband’s feet, which is not a sentence I ever expected to type. I am 68, I have been married to Ken for forty-one years, and on Sunday three different women at the bowls club asked me about his shoes. Not mine. His. So here is the story, once, because he will not tell it himself.

First, the situation. Ken has worn the same brown lace-ups for eleven years. He would not shop, and he would not be shopped for, and somewhere along the line he stopped coming on the long walks and the town days, because his feet were done by lunchtime and he would rather sit in the car with the paper than say so.

Nobody decides to become the man in the car. It happens because the comfortable shoes for men look like something you are issued at a hospital, and a man of a certain age would rather have sore feet than be seen in those. I do not blame him. I would not wear them either.

Sore feet in proper shoes, or comfortable feet in shoes he would not be seen dead in. Ken picked sore, for eleven years.

So I did what a wife does. I ordered a pair without telling him.

Then Sylvia’s Ron turned up in a pair

Ron came to the bowls club in June in a soft white knitted shoe with a tan tongue, and he walked the length of the green and back without once sitting down, which for Ron is unheard of. I asked Sylvia. Sylvia said, they weigh nothing, they give, and he has stopped moaning. That was all I needed.

They are called the Harry, from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now, and, it turns out, our husbands. I am careful with money and I will not pretend otherwise, but the summer sale was on, and I ordered them in an 8, which Ken insists is average, fully expecting him to refuse them.

He did not refuse them.

What happened when he put them on

I left them by his chair and said nothing. He picked one up, weighed it in his hand like a man buying a melon, put them on, walked to the end of the road and back, and said, these will do. From Ken, that is a standing ovation.

He has worn them every day since. To the bowls club, round the reservoir, and to Sylvia’s for tea, where she looked at his feet and said, well, look at you, which she has never once said to him in twenty years.

Here is why they work, as far as I can tell. The top is a soft knit that gives where his feet want it to give, so nothing rubs. The sole is thin and flat and bends where a foot bends, and there is room at the toe. They weigh about as much as a pair of slippers. And they are cut like a proper shoe, with a bit of tan leather-look at the tongue and heel, so nobody at the bowls club has said a word except to ask where they are from.

Three things worth knowing

One. They weigh nothing. A soft knit top and a thin flexible sole. He says it is like walking in his socks with the sensible bits added, and for a man whose feet were done by lunchtime, that is the whole argument.

Two. They look like a shoe, not a slipper. Rounded toe, tan tongue, tan pull-tab, cut like a smart casual shoe. He wears them with chinos to lunch and nobody blinks.

Three. Room and give where a man wants it. A roomy rounded toe, a soft knit that stretches, and a light flat sole that flexes. Eight colours, and he has already picked his second.

About the price

I will be plain about this bit, because the price is what made me suspicious.

They are £39.95. They were £80.00.

Half price is usually where I start asking what is wrong with them. I have found nothing wrong with them, and neither has Ken, who looked. It is a small boutique selling direct, no department store taking its slice in the middle, and a summer sale on to shift the season’s stock. That is the whole mystery.

And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real people rather than robots, so I read on. One woman had written, “Bought them for my husband who refuses to buy shoes. He wears nothing else now and has stopped complaining about his feet.” That settled it.

If you were stood at my kitchen table

If you were stood at my kitchen table with a brew and you asked me straight, this is what I would say.

If there is a man in your house wearing eleven-year-old shoes because his feet hurt and he will not say so, do not ask him. Order them, in his size, and leave them by his chair. It costs less than a decent roast and it gets him out of the car.

The sale is on and the white goes first. Once the summer stock has gone it is gone until next year. Stop dithering and go and look.

He has asked for the blue ones. Ken has never asked for a shoe in his life.

Pat