Year Zero, Day 1

Good bye to all that  Day One

Like everyone else in the affluent world, I've been thinking about decluttering, because we have far too much stuff, and also because the threat of house moving in the event of a possible separation does tend to clarify the mind wonderfully.   I am very attached to a lot of my stuff, but there are also items that are endlessly being moved from place to place never finding the place that's right, because really, there is no right place.  

Two ideas have come together: I heard someone say recently that one should get rid of one item a day. Years ago when we wanted to get rid of the kids' toys someone else suggested we photograph them before getting rid of them, then the boys could always have the memory years after they had grown out of the toys.   So, this is the beginning of a 365 day blog on the topic.   This is a test post, I needed to see how easy it is to use my tablet to photograph things and upload them here. It is extremely easy. So here is today's object. My old shoes:

  These shoes were bought in 2009, early in the year, at the Clark's shop in our local shopping mall.  They cost, incredibly, about £35 - reduced?  I was wearing them in April that year when I went to a rather fateful private view in Oxford.  They are Clarks shoes and were really comfortable for the first few years.    I stopped wearing them in winter 2014/5 by which time they had been mended about 3 times, and the upper was tearing away from the base of the shoe, again, and the cobbler refused to repair them again.  I wore them all the time.  They weren't in the least lovely.  For a while I kept them near the back door for use in the garden, but they were too far gone - my feet got wet, the unlovely rubber clogs were more practical. 

I don't know if this picture does them justice - the backs weren't crushed like that - I was using them to slop about it indoors before I finally decided that my slippers were better.    A couple of weeks ago I bought some new winter shoes.  They are less lovely to look at than these, being lace up Hotters with thick soles and a slight hint of "surgical boot" about them.  They were also ludicrously expensive, £80, reduced from ninety-something.  Why?  But they have cushioned insoles and are supportive in rather tight way.  

The old Clarks accompanied me all over the place.  Tthe tales they could tell... well, no.  Mostly they were on my feet, under the desk, while I wrote and wrote and wrote. They have been to Madrid and on a couple of day trips to France, but otherwise they haven't been much further than Oxford.  Now they will go to the shoe recycling bin in the Cannon Road car park - and be taken thence to a place of execution.  Oh dear, the pathetic fallacy - one really must avoid it, if one is ever to throw anything away.