A letter from a reader

My husband wore the same brown shoes for eleven years, because he did not need anything

I should explain at the outset that I have never written anything for strangers to read, and I am not a writer. I am also not the sort of woman who tells other wives what they ought to be buying their husbands. What goes on another woman's husband's feet is entirely her own business.

But three different women asked me about Geoff's trainers at the tea hut in the forest on Sunday, while he was queuing for the teas, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

Geoff is 71. If you ask him what he wants for his birthday, or for Christmas, or for anything, he says the same thing he has said for as long as I have known him. He does not need anything. And for eleven years he walked about in the same pair of brown lace-ups to prove it. The garden centre, the dog, the shops, his brother's in Nantwich. The same shoes, resoled once, the backs trodden down, one lace replaced with a lace that did not match.

It was my sister June who said it out loud. We were watching him come up the garden path from the car one afternoon in August, and she put her cup down.

Maggie, that man is walking on the uppers.

She was right, of course. And I realised I had stopped noticing, the way you stop noticing the crack in the kitchen tile. He had started sitting down on the bench by the garden centre till while I finished looking round. He had stopped coming the long way round the field with me and the dog. He never once complained. He just quietly did a little less.

I did not think any of that was about shoes. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides to wear the same pair until they fall apart. It happens quietly, one year at a time, until your sister puts her cup down and says it.

How it happens

Geoff used to be rather particular about his shoes. When we were courting he had a pair of suede ones he polished on a Sunday night, and he would not let me stand on them at dances.

What changed was not him. It was the shops, and I think a lot of you will recognise this.

Go and look at what they sell for men his age. On one wall there are running shoes built for a twenty-five-year-old doing a marathon, in colours you could see from space. On the other there are the grey ones with the velcro straps, which do their job perfectly well, and which Geoff looked at once in the shop in Chester and said, quite quietly, that he was not ready for those yet.

So he did what men of that generation do. He bought nothing. He wore the brown ones. And because he never said a word about it, neither did I.

What I had wrong

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

I kept waiting for him to choose. I thought if I bought him shoes he had not picked himself, he would put them in the wardrobe and never wear them, the way he has done with every jumper I have bought him since the children were small.

It turns out that was never the problem.

The problem was that everything in the shops asked him to be somebody. A sporty man, or an old man. What he actually wanted, though he would never have put it this way, was something that looked like the shoes he has always worn, and felt like the slippers he refuses to wear outside.

Smart enough to go to his brother's in, comfortable enough to go twice round the field in. It took me until 67 to work out that nobody was going to hand him that. I was going to have to go and find it.

The trainers are called the Oliver

They are from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique I have bought my own things from for a while now. I had no idea they did anything a man could wear until I was looking for something else entirely.

They are called the Oliver. A plain low trainer in a soft beige, with a white toe and a white sole, a little grey panel at the heel and ordinary laces. Nothing that shouts. They look like something a sensible man would wear to the pub on a Sunday. They come in black, blue and green as well, which I will come back to.

The sole is thick and cushioned, which is the first thing he noticed when he stood up in them. The lining lets the air through, so his feet do not cook in them by the afternoon the way they did in the brown ones. The sole grips properly, which matters on our back step when it has been raining. And the laces adjust, so you can get them snug or give a bit more room, depending on the foot.

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

What happened at the tea hut

He wore them for the first time on the Sunday walk in the forest, with his cords and the navy fleece he will not let me wash.

We went the long way round. The full loop, the one he has been cutting short for the last two years. When we got back to the tea hut he went to queue, and three women on the benches asked me where his shoes were from. Three. One of them was a woman called Rosemary from the Sunday walking group, who has walked behind Geoff every Sunday for six years and has never once commented on anything either of us has worn.

She said he looked like he had come out for the day instead of being brought. I have decided to take that as a compliment on his behalf.

What I noticed more than the compliments, though, was that he did not go straight to the armchair when we got in. He put the kettle on. He went out to the greenhouse. He had them on again the next morning to take the dog out across the field, and he has had them on every morning since.

That is the rarest sort of present to buy a man who does not need anything. The one he stops thinking of as a present by the second day, and just thinks of as his shoes.

Three things I have learned since

One. There will be a size for him. They run from a UK 4 right up to a UK 12.5, which covers just about every man I know. Geoff is a 9 and they fitted him properly first time.

Two. They go with everything he already owns. Cords, jeans, the trousers he wears to his brother's. They are low and plain enough that they do not look like he has borrowed them from a grandson.

Three. He will not thank you properly. Geoff said they were very nice, and that I should not have. Then he wore them to the garden centre, the forest, his brother's and the dentist, all in the first week. That is the thanks.

About the price

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

The Oliver is £31.95. It was £64.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because Geoff paid more than that to have the brown ones resoled.

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 Alresford had written, “Bought them for my husband, who never wants anything. He has not worn his old shoes since, and he asked me to get the black ones too.”

Then I ordered him the black pair as well, for church.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat in the garden with a pot of tea and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If you have a husband who says he does not need anything, and you have been watching him walk about in the same tired pair for longer than either of you would like to admit, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look.

Not because a pair of shoes will change his life. It will not. But there is something in watching him take the long way round again that I had quietly stopped expecting, and I would rather you did not stop expecting 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 9 in black 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 brown shoes went in the bin in September. He has not mentioned them once.

Maggie