Does buying shoes from Clark's signal the slippery slide into old age?

Recently I purchased my first pair of Clark’s shoes.

I believe I am now officially elderly.

Buying one’s first pair of Clark’s is a right of passage – like getting your first bra or passing your driving test.

I feel it is a symbol of the decline that began several months ago when I started wearing tracksuit pants outside the house and began purchasing items based not on look, but on feel (ooh my God – is that a stretch jersey?? So soft!). It is one more sign of my descent down the slippery slope of old age.

Once upon a time, I didn’t give a crap how clothes felt. I lived in a world of man made fibres – the tighter the better. My knickers were all g strings and my heels were all towering. What has happened? When did I turn from foxy, man made fibre clad minx into a full brief wearing, cotton sporting, Clark’s shoe wearing, comfy lovin’, non minx?

I can not believe that I have taken to wearing flats in an office environment. They may be groovy Clarks shoes (red patent mary jane’s, if you don’t mind) but they are Clark’s nonetheless.

I used to wear nothing but heels – the higher the better. I have a lovely collection of heels at home that sit silently and weep when I grab my Clark’s of a morning. ‘Why?’ I hear my two tone t-barred Dune heels cry, ‘Why have you forsaken us?’ My nude bustle ruffled shoes from the Office sniffle softly beside them. Then, suddenly - my red patent, white stitched Kurt Geiger heels leaps to my aide: ‘It’s not us – it’s the cobble stones – she can’t do the cobblestones’. My Kurt Geiger heels were with me on my most recent high heeled foray into down town Falmouth which ended with me coming askance on a cobble stoned stretch of pavement and flying past Waterstones before my fall was cushioned by a bag of soft fruit (I shit thee not).

I can’t do the cobblestones! High heels in Cornwall are difficult to master. You must look at your feet the entire time. The streets of Cornwall are elderly. They are not the shiny, easy to negotiate, laid in the 20th century pavements of Brisbane. They are rickety, lumpy old things from the 17 and 1800’s. God knows what chicks used to wear in days of yore, prior to Clark’s.

Plus, my Clark’s are so COMFY. It’s like walking on air. I seriously feel my feet sigh and stretch when I slip them on.

I have high heels under my desk at work in case of meetings. And I will never, ever, go out to dinner or the theatre etc in a pair of flats.* But for daytime, cobble stone negotiating, shopping adventures in Cornwall, I am a Clark’s convert. And I’m only 38.

* once upon a time I swore I would rather die than leave the house in a pair of trasksuit pants, so God knows anything is possible…..