A letter from a reader

At 67, I had been buying the same black ankle boot for forty years, and I could not tell my own pairs apart

My grandson asked me last week whether I had ever written anything longer than a birthday card, and the honest answer is no. I am not a writer, and it has never been my place to tell another woman what she ought to put on her feet.

But three different women asked me about my boots at the fireworks at the rugby club on Saturday night, standing in a muddy field in the dark, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

It started in September. My sister June came to stay for the weekend, and on the Sunday morning she went to fetch her shoes from the hall and did not come back. I found her crouched by the boot bench, holding up one black boot and then another, like somebody choosing between two identical lettuces.

Maggie, you have got four pairs of boots here and I cannot tell which ones are yours from which ones are new.

She was right, and I had to look twice myself. Four pairs of black ankle boots, bought over goodness knows how many years, every one of them a copy of the last. When one wore out I went into town and came home with the same boot again, because it was sensible, because it went with everything, and because it never once occurred to me to ask for anything else.

I did not choose that. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides to spend forty years in the same boot. It happens one sensible replacement at a time, until your sister holds two of them up in your hall and you cannot answer her.

How it happens

I was not always like this. When I was courting Geoff I had a pair of red shoes I wore to every dance going, and I wore the heels down to nothing and had them mended twice.

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

Go and look at the boots for women our age. On one side, the comfortable ones, cushioned and steady and every one of them in black, brown or navy, as if comfort and colour could not possibly come in the same box. On the other side, the pretty ones in the window, in lovely colours, on heels that would have me holding on to Geoff the whole way down the high street.

So you do what I did. You buy the comfortable black ones, because your feet matter more than your pride. You wear them everywhere. Nobody says anything, which 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 I had grown out of colour on my feet. I thought bright boots were for younger women, and that at my age the kindest thing you could do for everyone was to keep your feet quiet.

It turns out that was never my age.

It was that nobody had ever offered me a boot that was kind to my feet and had a bit of life in it at the same time. I had been choosing between comfortable and cheerful for so long that I had forgotten there was supposed to be a third option.

A low steady heel, a soft cushioned sole, an easy zip, and a colour that makes you smile when you look down. It took me until 67 to realise that was all I had been missing.

The boots are called the Lily

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 Lily. A soft ankle boot in a proper deep purple, the colour of damsons in a bowl, gently ruched over the front so it sits in soft folds rather than standing stiff, with a zip up the side and a low, steady heel. They do them in black as well, of course, and a blue, a red and a lovely mustard yellow, which I will come back to.

The sole is cushioned and soaks up the jolt of every step, so a long morning on my feet does not tell on me the way it used to. It is anti-slip, and grips properly on a wet path and on the kitchen floor alike. The design is supportive and steady, which on a muddy field at night is worth more than I can say. They are light, so you forget they are there. And the fit suits narrow or wide feet, which as somebody whose left foot has always been a little wider than her right, I appreciated more than 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 fireworks

The rugby club always does its fireworks early, before the big displays, and we go every year with our daughter and the grandchildren. Hot soup from the clubhouse, sparklers for the little ones, and the whole town stood along the rope at the edge of the pitch in the dark.

I wore the purple ones for the first time. Three women asked me about them before the first rocket had gone up. One of them was Doreen, who has sold the raffle tickets at that club for twenty years and has never said a word to me beyond a pound a strip.

She shone her torch at my feet, looked up at me, and said she could see me from the car park. From Doreen, that is a fanfare.

What I noticed more than the asking, though, was that I stopped thinking about my feet altogether. We stood on that wet grass for the best part of two hours, and I did not shift from foot to foot once, or go and sit in the car to warm up, which I have done every year for as long as I can remember.

The next morning I put them straight back on to walk the dog down the lane, and felt completely myself in them. That is the rarest sort of boot. The one that stands in a muddy field in the dark and then walks into the pub afterwards, and feels right in both.

Three things I have learned since

One. The zip is on the side. It runs up the side of the boot, so you can open it wide, slip your foot in and zip up in a moment, without any tugging at the heel. My old black ones had nothing of the sort, and I had not realised how much I hated the tugging until it stopped.

Two. Let the boot show. They look best with slim trousers that stop just at the top of the boot, so the ruching and the colour can be seen. Tucked under a long skirt they are a lovely surprise when you sit down.

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 cold nights.

About the price

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

The Lily is £29.95. It was £60.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because I have paid more than that for a pair of plain black boots that pinched by Christmas.

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 Hayfield had written, “Bought the yellow on a whim and wear them more than anything else I own. My husband says he can find me in any crowd now.”

Then I ordered the yellow pair as well, for the days when purple is not quite enough.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were stood together at the rope with a cup of soup going cold in our hands, waiting for the rockets, this is what I would say.

If you have been buying the same black boot for longer than you can remember, and you have quietly decided that colour on your feet is something you have grown out of, 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 looking down at your own feet and smiling 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 yellow 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.

There are still three pairs of black boots on the bench in our hall. June has been told she can have whichever ones she likes.

Maggie