A letter from a reader

At 67, I was still carrying a second pair of shoes in my handbag

I have never written anything like this before, and I want to say at the start that I am not a writer and I am not in the habit of telling other women what to put on their feet.

But four different women asked me about my sandals at my grandson's sports day a fortnight ago, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

What I have not explained to any of them is what happened just before that. My bag went over on the grass, and out of it came a second pair of shoes, flat ones, the ones I keep in there for when the first pair gives up. My grandson picked them up and held them out to me.

Nan, are these ones yours as well?

I said yes, love, and put them back in the bag, and felt about a hundred years old.

I did not choose that. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody sets out to carry two pairs of shoes through their own life.

How it happens

It is a system, and like most systems it started sensibly.

You have a pair you like the look of and a pair you can actually stand up in, and they are not the same pair, so you take both. You wear the good ones for arriving and the soft ones for the rest. Everybody at a wedding has seen a woman do this.

And then it stops being for weddings. It is sports day. It is the garden centre. It is a Tuesday.

What did not help is that the shops treat it as two different problems. There are shoes that look nice, and there are shoes that are comfortable, and the shops seem quite content for those to be separate purchases. So we buy both, and we carry both, and we call it being organised.

What I had wrong

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

I thought the trouble was how long I was on my feet. Too much standing, too many hours, my own fault for not sitting down.

It was not the hours. It was the width.

I had been buying sandals that were the right length and far too narrow across the front, so that four hours in, my toes had spent the entire afternoon being pressed towards each other. That is not standing too long. That is a shoe that was never the right shape.

What actually matters is a wide cut across the toes so they can sit where they naturally sit, straps that adjust everywhere rather than in one fixed place, and a sole deep enough to soften a field or a pavement. Get those three right and there is no second pair, because the first pair lasts.

The sandals are called the Rosanna

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 Rosanna. Black, with two broad straps across the foot and one round the ankle, all of them adjustable, on a thick soft sole with a bit of a roll to it. They do a grey and a blue as well, which I will come back to.

Because that was what I wanted to check. The width. There is proper room across the toes, and after years of narrow sandals that is an odd feeling for about a day and then it is simply how a shoe ought to be.

The straps are the other thing. Three of them, all adjustable, so the fit at ten in the morning and the fit at six in the evening can be two different fits.

And the sole is deep, with a little rocker to it, so standing about does not turn into aching about.

What happened at sports day

I wore them for the first time to my grandson's sports day, which is three hours of standing on a field pretending to understand what is happening in the relay.

Four women asked me where they were from. Four. One of them was Pauline, who I have known since our children were small and who has never once commented on anything I have worn.

What she actually noticed was that I had not gone back to the car. I have decided to take that as a compliment.

What I noticed more than the compliments, though, was at the end of it. Usually there is a point in the afternoon where I start thinking about the spare pair. It did not come.

The next morning I wore them to the market and filled a bag with vegetables, and they were just as right for that.

Three things I have learned since

One. Width is not the same as size. I had been going up a size to buy room, which only ever gave me a longer narrow shoe that slipped at the heel. What I actually needed was the same size cut wide across the front.

Two. Three straps beat one. A single strap fixes your foot in one position for the whole day. Three adjustable ones let the shoe follow the day rather than fight it.

Three. The handbag is lighter. A small thing, and it is the one that makes me laugh. I had genuinely forgotten what it was like to carry a bag with nothing in it but my own belongings.

About the price

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

The Rosanna is £29.95. It was £60.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because I have paid a great deal more than that for sandals that lasted me one afternoon on a field.

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 run a summer sale to shift the season's stock before it turns.

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. Real people, mixed opinions, mostly very good.

Then I ordered the grey as well.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat in the garden and you asked me, this is what I would say.

Have a look in your handbag. If there is a second pair of shoes in there, or a pair of folding pumps, or anything you put on at the point where the day stops being enjoyable, then the shoes you set off in are the wrong shoes and it is not you that is at fault.

One pair that lasts is a cheaper thing to try than most of what we spend money on, and it takes a fortnight to know either way.

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 grey was gone by the time I went back for it. And once the summer stock has sold through, that is it until next year.

There is nothing in my bag now but my purse and my glasses.

Maggie